NC Listen’s Director, Ron Woodard, was recently interviewed for an article by the New Bern Sun Journal. The complete text of the article is below.

Group aims to ‘motivate understanding’ of immigration

February 06, 2010
Barry Smith
Freedom Raleigh Bureau

RALEIGH — A new North Carolina immigration organization has formed. While it focuses on a hot issue of the day, it differs from most other immigration groups in that it isn’t an advocacy organization.

“We’re trying to motivate understanding,” said Randy Jones, who is president of Uniting NC’s board of directors. “We’re not advocating any particular position. We’re not trying to solve anything.”

Uniting NC is still rather small. It’s trying to hire a part-time director.

Yet it has already undertaken a billboard advertising campaign, with signs going up in the Asheville, Charlotte, Rocky Mount, Smithfield and Washington, N.C., areas. It has also sponsored some public service announcements on radio stations in the Research Triangle area and has some video messages from immigrants posted on its Web site (unitingnc.org).

Last year, it conducted a community meeting at an Elon church attended by 50 to 60 people, Jones said. The meeting took place on the same Saturday as a forum on immigration and the “287(g)” law-enforcement program at nearby Elon University, Jones said.

“We’re talking about people, human beings and the kinds of stories they have,” Jones said. “You can talk about people as being documented and undocumented and not think about who they are and why they’re here.”

Tony Asion, executive director of El Pueblo, a Raleigh-based advocacy organization for Latinos, said his organization and Uniting NC have different missions.

“The biggest difference between them and us is we are a Latino organization, trying to promote the importance of immigration reform, whereas Uniting NC is more of trying to get people to appreciate and accept immigration period, whether they be Hispanic or not,” Asion said. “They don’t get involved in the politics of it whereas I guess we do.”

Ron Woodard, director of NC Listen, which promotes stricter immigration policies and enforcement, said that he believed Uniting NC was using emotion as a means of diverting attention from the number of immigrants entering the country.

“They talk about the warm and fuzziness of immigration,” Woodard said. “I think they’re trying to put a flavor on it that the numbers don’t matter.”

Woodard said everything about immigration has to do with numbers.

“Illegal immigration wouldn’t be that bad if you only had a thousand people coming into the country this year,” Woodard said.

Jones said that Uniting NC is hoping to reach out to more groups that have a more restrictive point of view on the immigration issue.

“We’re open to and certainly wouldn’t want to exclude people from across the spectrum on the immigration issue,” Jones said.

In addition, he said Uniting NC will be reaching out to people in the law enforcement community since immigration law enforcement is becoming an issue. He said the goal is to promote understanding.

“People are people,” Jones said. “They have stories. If you take a moment to listen to the stories, hopefully it leads to more understanding.”

Barry Smith can be reached at barrysmith@freedom.com.