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Fernando Mateo has also served as an advocate for this nation's immigrants, including taking a controversial stance on the issue of driver's licenses issued to New York residents who are thought to be in this country illegally, or who do not have proper legal documentation verifying their immigration status.
In what he perceives as a compromise on the subject, Mateo has offered a proposed solution, which would create a 'Immigrant Driver Permit' designed specifically to forestall the suspension or revocation of these drivers' licenses, and to allow authorities to track alien drivers whose immigration status could not otherwise be verified.
Mateo has also supported President Bush's guest-worker visa program, which many critics have dubbed a thinly-veiled amnesty proposal.
According to the New York Sun, Mateo's name has been considered during discussions over who will fill a seat on the CUNY Board of Trustees, one that has been vacant since the resignation of Jeffrey Wiesenfeld.
In August 2006, Mateo held a public press conference denouncing the intentions of Survivor producer Mark Burnett to stage a contest between contestants of different races in his show's upcoming season. Describing this plan as an "offensive and cheap trick" intended to boost the reality TV program's allegedly declining ratings he went on to assert that the show will deepen pre-existing racial tensions, and lead to a rise in gambling and violence.
In December 2010, Mateo made some pro-racial profiling remarks in the case of gun-shot taxi-cab driver: "“You know sometimes it’s good that we are racially profiled because the God’s-honest truth is that 99 percent of the people that are robbing, stealing, killing these drivers are blacks and Hispanics." "Clearly everyone knows I’m not racist. I’m Hispanic and my father is black. ... My father is blacker than Al Sharpton.”
During the Presidential GOP race of 2012, he supported Perry "in his bid for the White House because he opposes President Obama's plan to raise taxes on people who make more than $250,000 per year."http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/19/smallbusiness/rick_perry_new_york/index.htm
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