Billboard campaign targets NM.
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The terrorists are coming and they've got New Mexico driver's licenses.
That's the message a New York-based group hopes to convey with an explosive new billboard that portrays masked Arab men in fatigues and kafiyahs strapped with rocket launchers and grenades.
The Coalition for a Secure Driver's License says the billboard, which will likely feature the slogan "Don't License Terrorists New Mexico," is slated to go up near the Roundhouse before the holidays.
The group decided to target New Mexico because the state allows residents without a Social Security number to use alternative documents like the IRS-issued Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) to get a driver's license.
"We're getting a lot of people who say we're discriminating against Muslims," Coalition President Amanda Bowman, a middle-aged mother of six who moved from to the US from Britain in 1977, says. "But we deliberately took an image from a terrorist site so people would know we're not talking about the average law-abiding Muslim here."
Bowman's group, which formed after 9.11, also has targeted North Carolina which has a law comparable to New Mexico's.
National Arab-American civil rights organizations are already sounding the alarm over the billboards.
"This is way over the top," Rebecca Abou-Chedid, a government relations and policy analyst for the Washington, DC-based Arab American Institute, says. "This has to do with a larger anti-immigration agenda, and this group is using the stereotype of the Arab bogeyman to attack new Americans and immigrants in general."
Siwar Bandar, of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), agrees. "Ultimately, our biggest fear is that by using stereotypical cultural symbols, you'll end up isolating the Arab-American community and inciting more hate crimes." Bindar says the ADC will try to dissuade billboard companies from running the ad and has started an e-mail campaign to urge people to call both North Carolina Gov. Michael F Easley and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.
"With estimates ranging from 10 to 13 million illegal immigrants living in the US, no one in the federal government has offered any program that identifies who they are and where they work," Richardson Spokesman Billy Sparks says. "In New Mexico, by offering driver's licenses, the state has dramatically reduced uninsured drivers, been able to make sure these individuals show up in court when required and have a good idea where they're living which is safer for our community. Racial profiling regardless of the intent is never right."
The Coalition plans to eventually expand its campaign to other states.
Says Bowman: "This is in your face. And the reason we feel so strongly is because we're engaged in a war against Islamo-facists. We realize the driver's license functions like a passport. You can get anywhere. These people are very smart."
