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| Fifth Column |
| Immigration Lawyer has terror connections |
| 2003-07-10 |
| EFL. Hat tip LGF There are many in American public life who have embarrassing pasts, like Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., or who engage in very questionable tactics, like Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill. But few members of mainstream organizations have worked closely and openly with terrorist groups, like Jeanne Butterfield, director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. The American Immigration Lawyers Association is the immigration bar’s equivalent of the American Bar Association. It is a national professional organization that requires membership, keeps immigration lawyers abreast of developments in immigration law and acts as an advocate for immigrants before legislative bodies. It also promulgates ethical standards for immigration lawyers. Jeanne Butterfield is, in some sense of the term, the nation’s head immigration lawyer (search). A major part of the organization’s work is developing and deploying legal strategies that ease the entry of immigrants, help to erect hurdles to their removal, and in many cases, are used in class actions to seek to keep people who never had any legal immigration status -- illegal aliens (search) -- in the country. You may recall that it was Ms. Butterfield who said, just after a group of young men on student visas flew planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, "I don’t think that the events of last week can be attributed to the failure of our immigration laws." To understand Ms. Butterfield’s history is to understand the newer and downright irresponsible positions taken by AILA. Before she was elected director of AILA, Jeanne Butterfield was executive director of the Palestine Solidarity Committee (search), the group that acted as a front for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in much the same way that Sinn Fein acted as a representative of the Irish Republican Army -- but without participating in electoral politics and representative government as Sinn Fein has. Instead, the Palestine Solidarity Committee seems to have devoted its efforts to apologizing for the PFLP and campaigning to isolate Israel, specifically U.S. aid to Israel. And then to help out Haman’s agenda. |
| Posted by:RiNeref |