If the Durham City Council was apt to listen to logic and well-reasoned arguments tonight, it would have taken the advice of City Councilmen Howard Clement III and Eugene A. Brown. Instead, they listened to the feel-good entreaties of City Manager Tom Bonfield and Police Chief Jose Lopez Sr., and voted to put the city’s stamp of approval on the sham Mexican I.D. called the matricula consular.
Brown pointed out that the city has no committees on foreign affairs or immigration services, and he said he came to the conclusion that since the police chief had already said he’s been accepting the consular for three years, why was the Durham City Council contemplating any action at all on the issue. Then he wondered out loud whether “we are being used to advance someone’s political agenda.”
Clement said he had done some research on the consular as an I.D. and had found that the U.S. Department of Justice as well as the FBI have termed it an unreliable document. He also pointed out that there is no way of knowing that the person holding the consular is actually the person named on the document, given the lax standards used by the Mexican Consulate to issue them. He said he didn’t see that this questionable document needed to “be imposed on the City of Durham,” especially since anyone here legally should already have a valid driver’s license and some form of I.D.
Needless to say, both Brown and Clement voted courageously against this absurd measure. The rest of the go-along-to-get-along council members, steamrolled by the pro-illegal immigration lobby groups in Durham, took refuge in the advice of law enforcement, as questionable as that advice was. Lopez, for instance, incredibly compared the consular to a Canadian driver’s license or a library card.
For his position tonight, and his eloquent comments prior to the vote, I have removed Clement from the City Council’s Mariachi Caucus. He was put there last summer for his vote on an equally ridiculous resolution to suspend city travel to the state of Oklahoma Arizona because of the immigration law passed by its legislature. Brown, for his vote against that resolution, was never in the Mariachi Caucus.
The Mariachi Caucus now consists of Mayor Pro-Tem Cora Cole-McFadden, Mayor William V. ‘Bill’ Bell, Diane N. Catotti, Michael Woodard, and Farad Ali, all of whom voted for both ridiculous measures.
