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At CNN Debate, DREAMers and UFW’s Dolores Huerta To Protest GOP’s Anti-immigrant Rhetoric

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Outside of the CNN GOP debate in Arizona tonight, Dreamers and immigrant rights advocates — including lifetime activist Dolores Huerta, co-founder of United Farm Workers — will be protesting the Republican candidates and their anti-immigrant rhetoric, which includes their support for hateful legislation such as the original “papers, please” law, SB 1070.

“…the Latino community in Arizona has woken up due to hateful legislation,” notes the DRM Capitol Group’s press statement. “Governor Mitt Romney has emerged as a strongly anti-immigrant candidate with his rhetoric on the DREAM Act being the most direct. In addition, his “self-deportation” policy, which emerged from the advice of radical anti-immigrant attorney Kris Kobach, author of Arizona’s notorious SB 1070, is nothing more than a disguise of a cruel scheme to make life unbearable for hard working immigrants.”

The DREAMers’ clear reading of some GOP candidates’ “outreach strategy” to Latino voters was also highlighed in an NPR piece from this morning, where DREAMer Daniel Rodriguez states his opposition to the Gingrich/Romney plan of gutting the DREAM Act to create the ARMS Act — a bill which would only provide a pathway to citizenship only for undocumented immigrants who choose to join the military.

That idea is offensive to “Dreamers” — undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally when they were young — who want to go to college, said 25-year-old activist Daniel Rodriguez.

“That’s telling me I’m good enough to die for this country,” Rodriguez said, “but I’m not good enough to study for it and to help it through my knowledge.”

NPR also talked to Cesar Vargas:

That’s why 28-year-old Cesar Vargas said he doesn’t like the idea of a “military only” DREAM Act, even though he wants to join the Marines.

“It tells you, you know, forget about your friends who want to go to college and you take advantage of this, and that’s not how it’s supposed to be,” he said.

And following are the details of the protest, where Cesar and other DREAMers will protest the GOP candidates for president:

Who: Undocumented youth and civil rights activist, Dolores Huerta.
What: Protest outside of the GOP debate to demand the candidates to stop their anti-immigrant rhetoric and support the full DREAM Act or they will lose the Latino vote in Arizona.
When: Wednesday, Feb. 22 – 5:00 local time
Where: Mesa Amphitheatre 263 N Center Street Mesa, AZ 85201

Feel free to also catch them at 8 PM est (5 PM cst), live on U-Stream, embedded below. For more on the debates, visit our twitter feed at 8 PM tonight, where I’ll be live-tweeting on behalf of @americasvoice