“Every nation has the right to set immigration policy,” Jim Ludwick declared as he began an address to the Yamhill County Republican Women’s Club last week. “Every citizen has the right to advocate” for what he considers the right policy.
Those aren’t just words to Ludwick, president of the state’s largest immigration reform group.
The McMinnville resident believes too many immigrants are coming into the U.S., and far too many of those are doing so illegally. The 2010 Census showed that U.S. population grew by 27 million in 10 years. That much growth, he said, “is unsustainable and a terrible burden for our children and grandchildren.”
He wants to stop illegal immigration entirely and limit legal arrivals to 230,000 per year — the average number that came in annually during the period in which “we grew into the strongest nation,” he said.
“We’re got to do something about the immigration issue,” he repeated, saying he’s an “advocate for reforms to protect our citizens.”
To achieve those goals, Ludwick founded Oregonians for Immigration Reform, or OFIR, in 2000.
Ludwick is a longtime McMinnville resident. He helped found the Mac Club to support McMinnville High School athletics, and served as president of Friends of Yamhill County, a land use group.
He graduated from Long Beach State College in 1964.
“I grew up in Southern California. It was diverse, but no one had a hyphenated name, like African-American or Italian-American,” he said. He and his neighbors were simply “Americans,” he said.
He said he isn’t a hater or a racist. He said he and other OFIR members simply want to protect the country from people who shouldn’t be here.
“What part of ‘illegal’ don’t they understand?” he asked.
Oregonians for Immigration Reform has sponsored several initiatives aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration.
In 2018, it sponsored Measure 105, which would have ended Oregon’s sanctuary laws. Voters turned it down, 64.5 percent no to 36.5 percent yes.
In 2014, OFIR led a successful effort to defeat Measure 88, which would have allowed illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses.
OFIR has been labeled “anti-immigrant” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nationwide group that says it monitors and exposes “hate groups and other extremists.”
As a result of the label, Ludwick, who calls the SPLC listing “arbitrary” and without evidence, has received numerous calls and letters disagreeing with the organization’s efforts and threatening him personally, as well.
While talking about OFIR to the Yamhill County Republican Women, Ludwick displayed a map of the U.S. It was mostly red, which he said indicated counties that voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. It included several spots of blue, mostly in densely populated areas such as Los Angeles and New York, indicating Hillary Clinton voters.
The denser the population, he said, the more residents feel they need laws to protect them and, therefore, the more willing they are to “turn their lives over to central government.”
As immigration causes population to grow, he said, the more likely voters will be to vote for the type of government advocated by “Democrats, Socialists and Marxists.” He later added “Communists” to the list.
Those groups, in other words, want to bring in more immigrants. If Republicans don’t stand up for their beliefs, “lots of those Trump counties will change” in the next election, he said.
Ludwick said he doesn’t believe immigration proponents who claim that immigrants commit fewer crimes than U.S. citizens. Rather, he said, evidence disputes that.
For instance, he said, the percentage of illegal immigrants in the Oregon State Prison is much higher than the percentage of legal residents who are locked up.
He claimed 137 illegal aliens are serving time for murder and 179 for rape. Illegal immigrants incarcerated for all crimes, he said, represent 18 percent of the prison’s population, but only 4 percent of the state population.
OFIR’s website cites a recent report stating as of Jan. 1, 6.15 percent of total Oregon Department of Corrections inmates have ICE detainers, denoting illegal immigrant status. Calls for further information requested from the DOC were not returned by press time.
Ludwick noted a 2008 Yamhill County case in which a 31-year-old illegal immigrant, Gustavo Mercado-Murillo, received 75 years in prison for abusing five children younger than 10.
Incarcerating this man is costing taxpayers much more than the average of $30,000 per year, Ludwick said, since the inmate, now 42, is on kidney dialysis. Taxpayers are paying for his treatment, and for the care of his wife and four children, too, he said.
“The cost just doesn’t end,” he said.
Ludwick also mentioned a Multnomah County judge who released illegal aliens from court so they wouldn’t be picked up by immigration agents. He filed a complaint, but the judge went unpunished.
“I bet every illegal hopes she’ll be the judge” for his or her case, he said.
Closer to home, Ludwick said, “the McMinnville police chief doesn’t want illegals to be afraid to report crimes, so he won’t turn them over to ICE.” He countered, “I don’t want people here who won’t report crimes.”
Ludwick said OFIR has sponsored speakers like a border patrol agent who served during the Obama administration. Back then, the speaker told OFIR members, it was a “catch and release” program where parents who tried to cross illegally were issued tickets and sent south.
But agents discovered that the same children kept showing up with different adults. “They were renting out little girls to accompany drug or human smugglers,” Ludwick said.
Illegal immigrants also raise the cost of education, Ludwick said. He said each undocumented student costs McMinnville High School $15,000, plus another $3,500 if the student is enrolled in English Language Learner programs.
Actually, the McMinnville School District receives state funding in the amount of $8,060 per student in every grade, according to Susan Escure, director of finances for the district. Citizenship makes no difference in the per-student allotment.
For each student in the ELL program, the district receives an additional $3,931, an amount determined by subtracting the transportation funding from the total per-student amount, then multiplying by one-half. That means the district receives a total of $11,991 for each student who is still learning English to offset the cost of the ELL program.
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