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."
Supposedly that passes for 'logic.' I can turn your 'logic' back upon you and ask if those who want to mine the borders also want to mine the shoulders of roads, since stopping there is illegal.
And if you two still stand by rewarding lawbreakers, could you please post your real names and credit card numbers so the next time Free Republic does its donation drive we can get it over with in the first five minutes?
His or her point stands. According to one internal poll, more than 7% of FR claimed to be against ANY immigration from Mexico, legal or otherwise.
I just read your homepage. As I read it, I was also thinking of General Ricardo Sanchez, a past general in Iraq. His parents were from Mexico. When he was in grade school, 1st or 2nd grade, I can’t remember, he was all ready working after school to supplement his family’s income. He worked his little heart out too help his family. I worked with him when he was a Major. He was well grounded. I have never met a nicer individual in my life. God bless you.
I take it you don't drive. There are perfectly legal reasons to stop on the side of the road. There are no legal reasons to break our immigration laws.
LOL! seriously, I laughed out loud on that one.
That was good humor.
Naw, it's posted with "No Parking" signs everywhere. Okay to mine those, according to the 'logic' of those who call for mining the border?
Oh, thanks for the props.
I like the way you think!
However, it won't work. The Mexican government will not be as friendy to illegals as we are. The 3 S solution will kick in....shoot, shovel, and shut up.
Then they should have their cars towed and pay the penalty.
And those that break our immigration laws should also pay a penalty and not be rewarded. Now how about those credit card numbers?
Good grief! That was the first thing that popped out at me, as well.
Buch of socialists, protectionists, communists, vigilantes, liberals or anyone else who dares commit the unforgivable sin of criticizing any policy favored by George W. Bush.
They don't complain that gays are diluting our culture and ruining our neighborhoods, or crowding our ERs and abusing our government services.
They don't want to take citizenship away from gays born in America. And they don't say that President Bush is a traitor because he doesn't bring the troops back from Iraq to help solve the problem of gays.
So you are still willing to reward criminals who break our immigration laws by giving them welfare benefits and citizenship, but you are unwilling to reward car thieves, bank robbers, home invaders, and identity thieves. Why that's DISCRIMINATION! I'm reporting you to the ACLU.
Still waiting on those credit card numbers.
If you could not provide your wife and children with necessities in your Mexican village would you be willing to risk your life to do what these migrant workers are doing or would you use the excuse that you won't do it because it's the same as robbing a bank?
Exactly so. Abortion has killed over 40 million Americans, and homosexual sodomy has killed over 500,000. But there's nary a peep about it from the self-avowed "borders-language-culture" crowd. Hearing Spanish being spoken in a fast food restaurant is what they find so horribly destructive to our culture - never native-born moral-liberalism.
What a silly unsubstantive response.
Nice try to spin that one into:
"people who post on FR have a lower opinion of Hispanics than gays"
Calling an opponents of illegal immigration "hate speech" is a cowardly way of chilling the debate. Liberals are currently using that same phrase in the argument of same-sex marriage.
Their slogan: "Hate is not a family value."
Again, nice try using the same *tactic* that the gay marriage lobby uses:
You truly have no honesty in your debate style whatsoever.
Oh that's right -- you're "proving" it's all about "hate."
Exactly! They only come around to stir up strife. It's people like them who cause a great deal of our anger towards illegals. THEY race bait and then scream that WE are racist.
OUR ancestors bought and paid for America with THEIR blood and THAT gives US the RIGHT to determine who to allow into OUR country. I'll guarantee you that they didn't die so Mexico could invade us!!Jihadist and bayoufraud don't deserve to live in America!! They won't be happy until America has become the same kind of cultural cesspool that Mexico is. Violent, corrupt, and illiterate! THAT'S what they want!
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