Fresno, Oaxacalifornia December 18, 2003
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
State Capitol Building
Sacramento, CA 95814
Fax: (916) 445-4633
Governor:
Today, december 18 is the International Day of Immigrants, according to the Convention on the Protection of the Rights of all Migrant Workers and Members of their Families that was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on december 18 of 1990 through the Resolution 45/158.
On this date of commemoration on historic accomplishment in the struggle for the rights of all migrants, we demand that you work ardously and in a urgent manner in a bill that will provide driver’s licence to every person who lives in California, regardless migratory status. We solicit you this, because like any other person, we migrants work hard to support our families and we also pay taxes. In this manner we contribute to the economic growth of the state. Therefore we want to have a driver’s licence which would allow us to acquire automovile insurance for the safety of all California drivers.
Contrary to what is been said, we migrants are not terrorist, not one person who have attempted to the security of the United States have been Mexican or Latin American. Terrorists have been people from Middle East who entered the United States with Visa, those are the one who were responsible for the September 11, 2001 attack of the twin towers in New York. Timothy McVeigh, who was a U.S. citizen was responsible of the terrorist attack in Oaklahoma City on April 19, 1995. For these reasons, there is no argument related to labor migration with terrorism. Migrants do not wish any harm to this country, we only want an opportunity to survive with dignity far from our place of origin where we can not find such opportunity. It is not fair to accuse “undocumented” people as terrorist and pretend to violate our human rights with this argument.
The Frente Indígena Oaxaqueño Binacional (FIOB), collected over one thousand signatures in the Central Valley of California of the people who want to have the right to receive a driver’s licence. Attached to this letter, we send you all the signatures that we collected and likewise, we inform you that we also participated in the great economic boycot last december 12 and we are disposed to repeat this action whenever possible until we see our demands met.
We send you our best regards and we hope a positive and immediate response from you regarding our demands.
“For respect to the rights of the indigenous people”
Sincerely,
Rufino Domínguez Santos, Leoncio Vásquez Santos,
General Coordinator Media Coordinator
