PEOPLE will not support immigration reform confab
UPA group that will meet locally is called ‘radical’
BY CLARE MARIE CELANO
Staff Writer

Americans in many towns across the nation — like Freehold Borough — have been dealing with issues related to illegal immigration over the past decade.

As residents decide how to cope with the situation, many grassroots civic groups have sprung up in an effort to find ways to deal with quality-of-life issues that have arisen in their town as a result of overcrowded housing and schools, among other things.

Representatives of an immigration reform group called United Patriots of America (UPA), from Linden, plan to meet at the VFW post, Water-works Road, Freehold Town-ship, on April 3. UPA says it wants to recruit people to join in its efforts to find ways to deal with what it calls “illegal alien trespassers.”

However, when UPA comes to Freehold Township it will not have the support of a Freehold Borough group that has itself tried to deal with the issues brought about by illegal immigration. Members of Pressing Elected Officials to Protect our Living Environment (PEOPLE) said this week that they do not want to be connected in any way with UPA.

For several years, members of PEOPLE have focused their attention on addressing quality-of-life issues in the borough, such as overcrowded housing, increasing school enrollment and strained town services. PEOPLE members say these quality-of-life issues have arisen because of a large influx of illegal aliens to the town in recent years.

According to Gail Trojan, a member of the PEOPLE steering committee, UPA is not an organization that the local group supports.

Trojan said she originally sent an e-mail to members of PEOPLE to tell them about the UPA meeting because she was under the impression UPA was connected with the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a group PEOPLE supports. She said UPA appeared on FAIR’s Internet Web site.

FAIR has more than 70,000 members nationwide and is a nonpartisan group whose membership runs from liberal to conservative, according to its Web site. FAIR says its goal is “to improve border security, stop illegal immigration and promote immigration levels consistent with the national interest, more traditional rates of about 300,000 per year.”

Trojan said that after investigating UPA she realized it was not part of FAIR and quickly notified her members that PEOPLE would not support this group.

Stating that she did not “condone the group’s activities,” Trojan said she believes UPA is a bit more “forceful” in its activities than FAIR and said “forceful” is not a method that members of PEOPLE condone.

Vanessa Minenna, another member of the PEOPLE steering committee, said she initially investigated UPA more than a year ago and was not pleased with what she found. She said that at that time she contacted representatives from FAIR as well as members of 9/11 Families for a Secure America to ask their opinion about UPA. Minenna said both groups declined to support UPA.

“Both FAIR and 9/11 Families for a Secure America are groups that focus on many legitimate concerns in the country, including illegal immigration. These groups are not looking for a witch hunt,” Minenna said.

Minenna said the issue of immigration is a complex one and she believes UPA’s agenda is a bit “radical.”

“I will not affiliate myself with this group because they have a totally different agenda than we do,” Minenna said, then added, “and we did not invite them to Freehold. I believe them to be not above board and a little radical.”

According to the UPA Web site, the April 3 meeting in Freehold Township is to recruit members, rally support for the Arizona Minuteman project and recruit members for events to be held at the White House on April 25.