Putting his money where immigrants need it
Washington, DC,_ Last week New America Media reported on Robert Hildreth, a multimillionaire immigration advocate who made his fortune trading Latin American bonds is about to start a national fund that posts bail for workers seized in the ICE raids. Talk about the “American spirit” Hildreth was moved to his actions after seeing what he viewed as “un-American” images on television news showing shackled workers being deported. He then contacted the Greater Boston Legal Services to start helping post bail. After he did this for a few times in other states Hildreth decided to take his effort nationwide. He is pushing to develop a non-profit bond fund to match 50% of bail funds and provide 100% in only extreme cases. His rational and quotes are very much in the best American traditions – “In America we should always be finding ways to match immigrant money. Their propensity is to save. Immigrants sent home $60 billion last year in the form of remittances.”
The New America Media report went on to say, “One might wonder why a descendant of Irish immigrants and Puritans who settled in Boston more than three centuries ago worries about immigrants coming to America today. “I am very pro-immigrant and it comes more from an American ideal than from being a Mother Theresa type. I think immigration is the only model America has ever known. We have never known a day, a minute, where we haven’t accepted immigrants. They provide huge economic benefits to us. The 12 million undocumented workers in this country spend billions of dollars every year in supermarkets, on rent and in taxes, etc. I have no idea what it would be like to yank them out by the root, and I wouldn’t want to take that risk.” This man belongs in the one-day-to-be Latino Hall of Fame.
