Flier angers some Hispanics

BOISE – A Boise State University group has angered Hispanic leaders and other organizations by promoting a speech with a “food stamp drawing” that requires climbing through a hole in a fence and offering fake identification for a shot at winning a dinner at a Mexican restaurant.

The school’s College Republicans organization is offering the dinner for two to promote a speech it is sponsoring by Canyon County Commissioner Robert Vasquez, a vocal critic of U.S. immigration policy who is planning to run for the U.S. Senate in 2008.

The speech – scheduled for Thursday by the College Republicans – is in the midst of the university’s Cesar Chavez Week, sponsored by the Boise State Cultural Center.

As part of the school’s weeklong event, students and professionals who came from a farm-working background will discuss their personal history, and a documentary film follows immigrants traveling to the United States from Nicaragua.

Chavez championed the rights of farmworkers and helped establish the United Farm Workers Union. He died in 1993, and events such as BSU’s Cesar Chavez Week are held in many areas in association with Chavez’s March 31 birthday.

The flier on the College Republicans’ Web site is headlined “America’s Illegal Alien Invasion” and has a picture of Vasquez as well as examples of a resident alien card, a Texas Health and Human Services Medicaid Card, Idaho driver’s license and Social Security Card.

It also contains an image of a highway caution sign that has a couple running while dragging a young child. Above the sign at a slanted angle is “Celebrate Cesar Chavez Week.”

Jonathan Sawmiller, president of the College Republicans, defended the flier.

“It’s more of an attention-getting device,” Sawmiller told the Idaho Press-Tribune. The group’s Web site calls the dinner drawing “humorous.”

Not everyone is amused.

“It certainly singles out a particular segment of students at the college and I’m pretty sure if you ask Hispanic students, this is beyond the realm of humor,” said Ed Keener, board chairman for The Interfaith Alliance of Idaho, which plans a silent vigil the evening of Vasquez’s speech. “It’s trying to hurt somebody.”

Graciela Fonseca, president of Idaho’s Hispanic Women’s Organization, Mujeres Unidas de Idaho, said members were “outraged” by the flier.

“It’s kind of mean-spirited,” she said, adding it will stir up hatred and racism. Fonseca said it also made light of people who have died trying to cross deserts in the southwestern United States.

“It’s very anti-immigrant,” said Maria Mabbutt of the Idaho Hispanic Caucus. “It’s very divisive.”

Vasquez said the promotional flier was not racist, and that those who thought otherwise “find racism in everything that they disagree with.”