Posted on 07/17/2005 12:05:52 PM PDT by Graybeard58
MORRISTOWN, Tenn. - A volunteer movement that vows to guard America from a wave of illegal immigration has spread from the dusty U.S.-Mexican border to the verdant hollows of Appalachia.
At least 40 anti-immigration groups have popped up nationally, inspired by the Minuteman Project that rallied hundreds this year to patrol the Mexican border in Arizona.
"It's like O'Leary's cow has kicked over the lantern. The fire has just started now," said Carl "Two Feathers" Whitaker, referring to the fabled start of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Whitaker, an American Indian activist and perennial gubernatorial candidate, runs the Tennessee Volunteer Minutemen, aimed at exposing those who employ illegals.
Critics call the movement vigilantism, and some hear in the words of the Minutemen a vitriol similar to what hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan used against Southern blacks in the 1960s.
The Minuteman Project has generated chapters in 18 states - from California to states far from Mexico, like Utah, Minnesota and Maine. The Tennessee group and others like it have no direct affiliation, but share a common goal.
"I struck the mother lode of patriotism or nationalism or whatever you want to call it," said Jim Gilchrist, a Vietnam veteran and retired CPA who co-founded the Minuteman Project 10 months ago. "That common nerve that was bothering a lot of people, but due to politically correct paralysis ... everyone was afraid to bring up - the lack of law enforcement."
At the Department of Homeland Security, whose authority includes patrolling borders and enforcing immigration laws, response to Minuteman-type activism is guarded.
"Homeland security is a shared responsibility, and the department believes the American public plays a critical role in helping to defend the homeland," agency spokesman Jarrod Agen said from Washington. "But as far doing an investigation or anything beyond giving us a heads-up, that should be handled by trained law enforcement."
A group leading patrols of the California border raised concerns from the U.S. Border Patrol last week when they urged volunteers to bring baseball bats, mace, pepper spray and machetes to patrol the border. They backed off the recommendation, but insisted on another weapon when they started patrols Saturday: guns.
"The guns are for one reason - to keep my people alive," said Jim Chase, a former Arizona Minuteman volunteer who is leading the effort.
Gilchrist said people from across the country have been sending him dirt on companies that hire illegal immigrants.
"It is a rampant problem. It is happening in Chicago and Portland, Maine. And Milwaukee and Montana and Idaho. And these people want the government to do something," he said.
The Southeast has the nation's fastest-growing Hispanic population. In Tennessee, the Hispanic population nearly tripled in the last decade.
The Tennessee Minutemen, which plans rallies in Memphis and Nashville and reputedly has heard from at least 120 potential members statewide, insist they are not vigilantes or racists.
"We don't want to project it as a hate group. We don't hate anybody or anything. But there are legal immigrants and illegal," Whitaker said.
In Morristown, a Southern industrial town of 25,000 with a small but burgeoning population of Latinos, some see the Volunteer Minutemen's spiel as race baiting.
"The same sort of dogmatism that racists used against blacks in lower Alabama and across the South, I am seeing the same patterns here," said Thom Robinson, who heads the area's Chamber of Commerce. "They are using it as a racially divisive thing."
Santos Aguilar, executive director with Alianza del Pueblo, a regional Hispanic support group in Knoxville, said he fears the volunteers are "spreading a lot of misinformation and are terrorizing the ethnic community in the area."
Members of the Hamblen County Commission recently suggested that Hispanic immigrants were to blame if property taxes have to be raised next year - though commissioners insisted they were talking only about illegal immigrants.
County Commissioner Tom Lowe, who says "we do not want (all) Hispanics stereotyped as illegal," estimates as many as 85 percent of Hamblen's Hispanics are - and he fears they carry drug-resistant disease.
"We could be two or three aliens away from an epidemic that would sweep through our county and state," the retired pharmacist said.
Hamblen County Mayor David Purkey said, like Lowe, he supports immigration laws, but finds such comments disturbing. "I think you have to be careful when you are expressing your opinion on that, that you don't appear as if you are against diversity as a whole," he said.
Guatemala native Noel Montepeque, who owns a company that provides a variety of blue-collar jobs to Hispanics, said the tone has changed since the first migrant farm workers passed through the area in the 1990s.
"Now they are getting afraid of the many Hispanic folks coming in," Montepeque said. "And we are coming to stay."
lol Sure. Have you discovered you were wrong in saying that the "guest workers" would have to apply for permanent residence from their home country yet? Or is that another fact youre choosing to ignore?
Swamp-Stick just pulls numbers out of thin air.
He constantly does that. Good job calling him out.
Regards
>"We have translators in hospitals, social services, police stations, schools etc. All required by law"<
Hey HT,
I appreciate your info. I look to you for the straight scoop! :)
Wasn't there a requirement that the HHS recently tried (unsuccessfully) to implement with hospitals, and doctors , requiring them to provide Hispanic translators, Espanol documents and etc?
I seem to recall reading something about that.
>"It's been an hour now since I posed the question to bayourod AGAIN. You have posted since I last asked you to provide documentation for your statement that 20% of Marines are hispanic."<
thanks HT.
I'm going to see if I can find that info.
An executive order? Good grief.
No way most doctors offices and hospitals can afford that.
Ridiculous.
Thanks for the info and link in #126. My next question to him, if he ever answered the first one was just how he defined hispanic. My dictionary defines it the same as you did - Spanish speaking of any nationality.
These people who are getting all worked up about the plight of the poor illegal aliens need to take a trip to the southwest U.S, and see the abject poverty of American Indians living on reservations. I recently returned from Arizona & New Mexico and I haven't seen that kind of poverty since rural Mississippi in the 60s.
Those are pretty impressive numbers and bear out what one sees on news out of Iraq. My guess would be that most of the "Hispanics" would be Mexicans.
And, to further clarify my position on this issue, my lifelong experience with working with and living with Mexican immigrants has been very positive.
That said, nothing justifies the absolute mess that constitutes our border and immigration agencies.
>"Those are pretty impressive numbers and bear out what one sees on news out of Iraq. My guess would be that most of the "Hispanics" would be Mexicans."<
- My guess would be, that most of the Hispanics in our military would be: *Americans.*
:^)
Regards
Delivery Room Translators Needed With Rise In Immigrant Births
Report Says Almost 1 In 4 U.S. Births Is To Foreign-Born Mother
POSTED: 6:42 am EDT July 18, 2005
UTICA, N.Y. -- The man from Bosnia was just not understanding. His wife was in labor at a central New York hospital and the doctor was trying to explain in English the need for a Caesarean section.
Horrified, the man translated incorrectly and told his wife the baby was dead, and it would have to be cut out of her. The woman went into shock. Though the baby was healthy, she couldn't take care of it for a week.
Almost one in four American births is now to a foreign-born mother, according to a recent report by the Center for Immigration Studies. The result, medical experts and advocates say, is a growing pressure on American health care centers to not only deliver babies, but deliver them in more languages than one.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 says hospitals that get federal money must provide interpreter services. It just doesn't say how. Most hospitals reach out with phone-based interpretation services. But critics say the phone has limitations, especially during childbirth.
"What, are they going to pass the receiver back and forth while the doctor is catching the baby?" asked Dr. Francesca Gany, director of the Center for Immigrant Health at the New York University School of Medicine. "Health care facilities are definitely feeling the heat."
The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations is studying the link between medical error and interpretation issues, Gany said. And the National Health Law Program is looking at how small health care providers can offer language services. A report by the Washington-based Institute of Medicine said 56 percent of such providers surveyed had received no language training.
Though studies are underway, there are no national numbers for access to, or use of, interpreter services in health care. But there are some telling samples.
Cost is a barrier and most hospitals told the New Jersey survey that reimbursement for translation services is needed. A 2002 study by the National Association of Children's Hospitals found interpreting costs at 22 hospitals ranged from $1,800 to $847,000 per year.
http://www.local10.com/health/4734650/detail.html
>"My next question to him, if he ever answered the first one was just how he defined hispanic"<
I'm sure 'ol Swamp-Stick's view is that a Hispanic is exclusively of Mexican decent.
He's (by his own statements) in the resteraunt business.
Funny thing is, inspte of all his multi-cultural hoopla, Palillo Del Pantano (Swamp Stick, in Spanish) doesn't speak a word of Espanol...Not a lick. Zilch, nada, *cero*.
Isn't that odd?
Bookmarked
Thanks, HT
Small businesses will be hurt by such a program, as they currently pay illegals less than minimum wage. If they are legalized, labor costs will skyrocket.
No matter how many times you utter that nonsense, it doesn't change the fact that you are resorting to despicable liberal tactics in an attempt to slime good people.
The illegal status of the workers is what enables the business to pay sub-minimum wages. With the workers legalized, smaller businesses such as restaurants will definitely be affected negatively.
;^D
RE: >"So your laziness to understand another must be codified into law?"<
Usted me demando era perezoso, porque deseo Ingles como lengua oficial para este país. Bien, usted ha estado traduciendo estos postes, usted idiota multi-cultural del jihad?
Pero usted no habla una palabra del espanol, le hace, usted farsante!
;^D
Quite a few aren't.
But your point is acknowledged. ;-)
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