Terry Funderburk Speaks out 10-24-07 (received by email directly from Terry)

I got up early this morning because I wanted to write this while the details and anger are still fresh in my mind. I attended an illegal immigration meeting with a friend named Jeffrey West last night in Charleston, SC on the Trident Community College campus. This was one of a series of meetings that the SC Senate judiciary steering is holding around the state to get ideas on legislation from South Carolina citizens. There were six state senators in attendance and altogether there were about 100 people that attended from all over the state. Each person that spoke was limited to 2 minutes each and I noticed a lot of anger from most of them.

       One Hispanic preacher got up and mentioned that there are a lot of native born Hispanic-American children (anchor babies) in the state and we needed to love and nurture them and to assist them to become good American citizens and to help them in every way we can. Another Hispanic preacher said that the undocumented Hispanics (illegal aliens) were very hard workers and that he was speaking from his experience in the restaurant field. He said that their people prepared and served our food every day and night and that we should really offer our appreciation to them (amnesty).

         When I finally got to speak, I introduced myself and told them I was from Columbia and first wanted to get two things off my chest while they were fresh in my mind. I said my son was born in West Germany while I was in the military but that he was an AMERICAN citizen and not a German citizen. And that he had never petitioned or protested things from Germany that were not his to have. And that the Hispanics working in our restaurants may be hard workers but until a couple of years ago those jobs were held by our sons and daughters. Now they don’t have those jobs thanks to the new labor force. At this point I think I got everybody’s attention.   

 I then mentioned what happened to my business, namely that I am being bankrupted by the new labor force, the ones that are here to do the jobs that Americans will not do. I said that I hadn’t had any work in the last three weeks, that my sons home was almost in foreclosure and that his telephone was shut off yesterday because of his inability to pay the bill. I asked if anyone wanted to take a guess on why this was happening? The first person that answered hit the nail on the head. Illegal aliens! I also asked them to imagine how it is to come into your house and see your wife crying because there was no money to pay the bills.

         I told them about what had happened to me personally. That I had lost another job, and protested because I am being forced out of business by illegal competition.  And that I got arrested and jailed for saying a bad word to the employer. I mentioned that I had turned down two chances to plead guilty with no punishment and that the prosecutor had pressed another charge of cursing after that second refusal. I blew them away when I told them what the sentence for cursing is in my case. Sixty days in jail! Can you believe that? The lopsided justice. And I am the defendant instead of the victim. LOL.

 I finally wrapped up my 2 minutes by saying that I had given up on the politicians in my state because if they were really interested in the welfare of the citizens of South Carolina, then we wouldn’t be needing to have an illegal immigration meeting because we would not have a state that is overrun with illegal aliens to begin with. One person asked me if  I was in contact with our politicians on the matter and I responded that it is hard to contact them when they have me blacklisted. And that if they didn’t believe what I said then give me their email addresses and I would prove it to them.

       One thing that I did notice was that the Hispanic preachers left about ten minutes after I finished. They just got up in masse and left without saying anything to anybody. A lot of people had some good things to say, like how we need interpreters in court and how our schools are flooded with Hispanic kids requiring all kinds of special needs from the citizens of South Carolina. There were also a few people there that were in a similar position as mine in the workplace and they brought out some good points.

        My friend Jeff West is a biologist with the SCDOT and he has a lot of experience on the subject. He mentioned Saluda County, SC being 40% illegal Hispanic and that every other illegal there has been tested positive for tuberculosis. He had a picture with him taken this past weekend in Saluda. There is a truck in the picture with Mexican license plates that is being driven around locally, apparently with the permission of the Saluda County Sheriffs department and police chief. Jeff West is also an author and reporter. He has written a book on his experiences with illegal immigration and it is an eye opener. I suggest that everyone read it, the name of it is “The Alienation of America”.

        That meeting lasted about two hours and I learned a lot. One man introduced himself afterwards and said that he was a retired attorney and that he would like to assist in my case if it was okay with my lawyer. I just hope that my anger reached those politicians, I tried to make them feel the hopelessness of my situation. It feels really weird seeing everything I have ever worked for going down the drain, to see the American workers here being replaced by an entirely new work force. And with the complicity of so called American employers and being aided and abetted by those politicians in that meeting. That illegal work force, by the way, has almost completely taken over the construction industry in Columbia. I have come to the conclusion that the citizens are going to have to solve the problems we are having because the politicians are on the other side.