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."
Hey, it's not a question of whites-only or blacks-only, browns-only or only of any kind. It is a question of laws, territorial integrity and our right as a nation to control who, what, when and where crosses our border. Nothing more, nothing less.
You have a problem with that?
We've had enough immigration -- legal and illegal. The nation is too crowded. None of the immigrants is assimilating. Not one. Most of them are in the lower classes economically, culturally and politically. They are too expensive -- they get more government services than they pay for. Time to call a halt to all immigration for awhile.
Tell us why are you two pro-illegal, anti-U.S. sovereignty, pro-Mexifornian, race-baiters still participate in these threads??
Oh that's right -- you're "proving" it's all about "hate."
"...against mexican & chinese/with all due respect you are wrong..."
The "against mexican & chinese" boy is wrong because those who feel it is time to take a break from immigration are just as opposed to having an Englishman come here as any other nationality. The people who are against our misguided immigration policy are not against immigrants. The main points of objection are overcrowding and tax expense: for every dollar the immigrant contributes, he requires two from the government -- that's you and me.
No difference?????? What are you smoking pot or something???
A legal immigrant must have 2 financial sponsors guarantying against welfare etc etc. Illegals are parasites sucking us the host dry to the bone.
Too bad they waited so long, as some estimates are as high as 25 million now in the United States.
No matter how many times the word "immigrant" is inserted, it can never mask the stench of a rotting liberal.
Hey, I love your idea. When do we start?
I just came in from shopping in Yonkers, NY. English is definately becoming a second class language in many many major cities.
Do you have any proof to back up your comment or are you simply expressing your opinion? Are you in support of illegal immigration or are you opposed to illegal immigration?
That's the longest FReeper name I've ever seen.
Yeah, that silly old "rule of law". Who needs laws, right? I guess anybody who wants our laws enforced, and I mean ALL laws and not just immigration laws, is a hateful person. By the way, are you in support of illegal immigration or are you opposed to illegal immigration?
1. definitely 2. defiantly 3. definably 4. differently 5. defilement 6. diffidently 7. definement 8. defensible 9. definiteness 10. definable
It would be interesting to see how the Mexican government would handle millions of illegal immigrants who do not speak their language, refuse to assimilate, took jobs from their own citizens, and lowered the standard of living for everyone in the country.
I know. I made a mistake back in 2000 when I signed up. I didn’t know at that time the difference between one’s screen name and a tag. I thought it was all one and the same.
"It would be interesting to see how the Mexican government would handle millions of illegal immigrants who do not speak their language, refuse to assimilate, took jobs from their own citizens, and lowered the standard of living for everyone in the country."
They would never allow it.
They would shoot them. Just as the Federale`s shoot the Guatemalans that sneak across Mexico's Souther border. The PRI is a party of oligarchs that will endure no reforms to better the life of the average Mexican. The PRI expects the "Yanki" to do that.
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