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."
You're the one who supports lawbreaking by foreigners in the United States. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Your only defense when you're pressed on this issue is to resort to name-calling. Now you bring up "hate speech" because we speak out against illegal immigration. You're starting to sound more and more like a Liberal every day.
Best idea I've read here in a long time.
Never the less, Greg Craig was, is, and always will be a mango tree lawyer. He’s the shyster pimp (friend of the Clintons) who sent Elian Gonzales back to Cuba.
So do I. Too bad you assumed the worst in me before you put your fingers up your......
read post 22
"We've had enough immigration -- legal and illegal."
read post 22
To some extent I fall in this category. I am not against legal immigration but I favor reduced numbers and I think we should have an immigration policy that serves the interests and is consistent with the will of the existing citizenry (government for the people).
The majority of Americans understand that their interests are not served by mass immigration. Almost every poll on the subject shows that Americans want illegal immigration stopped, want legal immigration to either remain the same or be reduced, don't approve of amnesty and don't want a guest worker program. I think a representative government should govern in accordance with the will of the existing citizenry rather than flooding the labor market for the benefit of and in accordance with the will of a few rich elites.
It is a matter of both numbers and quality. Part of the problem is that there are too many immigrants coming and it is wrecking things like health care and schools. Our own children can't get a decent education, at least in part because the schools are too busy helping kids that don't speak English. Another part of the problem is quality. I have a lot less heartburn with an immigrant that can hit the ground running and be a success and net contributor to our tax base from day one. I'm willing to take pretty much as many doctors and engineers as India wants to send. But most illegal immigrants are ignorant and ill equipped to prosper in our economy and represent a cost to taxpayers no matter how long they stay or how hard they work.
but these groups would still be against the mexican and chinese immigrants.
In my case, that is true enough. The illegals will still be a burden on taxpayers after they get amnesty and will get even more expensive once they get cut in on the full buffet of social benefits.
And by the way, I am a Hispanic. This is not about racism but rather rule of law.
If you don't have an argument that holds water against a loyal and sovereign citizen of a nation, pick on their spelling or grammar to get them to stop.
Rule #3 for "free trade" "open border" internationalists
I read it (again) and agree with the poster.
It IS expensive to me, the taxpayer, the way this is being handled!!!!!!
In other words, it doesn't matter whether someone makes a distinction between legal and illegal immigration, YOU know deep in your heart what they're REALLY thinking and what they're "trying to hide."
The mind police's favorite phrase: "papers please."
Hardly so. Anyone who likes to carp about English had better be rather stellar in it use themselves or someone may come along to rub their noses with their own words.
"in it use" ---> "in its use"
Fair enough. But I am not one who carps about foreigners and ESL all the time.
I think the anti illegal immigration groups are also anti legal immigration also."
LINK, Facts, Proof?
No problem. Have a nice day.
I always wonder if those that propose rewarding people who break our laws are willing to swing that pendulum to it's logical conclusion.
If someone steals your car, would you be willing to allow them to keep it even though you would still have to make the payments?
Should bank robbers be allowed to keep the money that they stole even if it came out of your account and you wouldn't get it back?
If someone breaks into your house and steals everything, shouldn't they be allowed to keep it and forgo prosecution?
If an identity thief stole the equity out of your house and maxed out a bunch of credit cards in your name, would you give them a pass and assume the payments on all the debt?
So Cultural Jihad and bayourod, inquiring minds want to know.
"We've had enough immigration -- legal and illegal."
Post #22 wasn't quoting anything from the article. It was posted by a FReeper who was expressing their personal opinion on the subject. But you posted the following comment:
A guest worker program and or amnesty would make the illegals into legals, but these groups would still be against the mexican and chinese immigrants.
So you were simply expressing your personal opinion when you posted this, correct?
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