Selling bumper stickers that resemble hunting permits with the words “Illegal Immigrant Hunting License” has brought a barrage of complaints down on a Colorado-based convenience store.
Cenex gas station in Eaton, about 60 miles north of Denver, was stocking the stickers until the complaints began on the company's Facebook page. The store, owned by Agfinity Inc., removed the shocking stickers over the weekend, according to local station
KUSA-TV.
The rectangular sticker had a green background and yellow United States with "USA" stamped across, with the phrases "Illegal Immigrant Hunting Permit" and "No bagging – Tagging not required" in a bold font.
"I just couldn't believe my eyes," one viewer told KUSA-TV of the offensive stickers.
Other than saying saying the stickers had been removed over the weekend, Agfinity spokesperson Mark Reinert said the company had no official comment on the stickers.
A reporter at KUSA-TV bought one of the stickers and when the journalist went back to the store to ask employees about it, they claimed to be clueless about the sale.
"I don't know if we just missed one or two in there, but those were not supposed to be there," said an Agfinity employee who wasn't identified.
Central States Novelty, based in Kansas, makes and distributes the stickers to Agfinity stores and bills itself as “one of, if not the largest, wholesale supplier of novelties, gifts and general merchandise for the convenience store and truck stop industry in the Midwest.”
Central States Novelty did not comment.
Minority rights activists across the Internet slammed the sticker, including the blog Latino Rebels which said its anti-immigrant message is offensive to Hispanics.
The hunting permit image has been floating around and causing a stir for a while. In October 2011, an online retailer in the San Francisco Bay area called CafePress stopped selling a t-shirt with the same "illegal immigrant hunting permit" image after numerous complaints rolled in.
"This product has absolutely no use other than to spread, incite, promote and justify racial hatred, violence, xenophobia, and other forms of hatred based on intolerance and to demonize immigrants as invaders who should be shot on sight," activist Victor Hoelscher wrote in a change.org petition to CafePress at the time.
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