Posted on 12/24/2006 5:26:08 AM PST by radar101
SAN DIEGO -- For 20 years, many of the illegal immigrants drawn by jobs in tomato fields have worshipped at an outdoor church, a concrete altar in a canyon where they slept under the shelter of plywood and plastic tarps and bathed in a stream.
Today, however, McGonigle Canyon is overshadowed by multimillion-dollar homes, and police and landowners want the eyesores gone. The squatters and their tree-covered place of worship, which the Roman Catholic church installed in the 1980s, are being expelled in one of the latest skirmishes in the nation's battle over illegal immigration and homeless squatters' camps.
"We're wandering pilgrims once again," Monsignor Frank Fawcett told about 75 people at a Mass earlier this month. The service was held in a dirt parking lot at the top of the canyon because rain turned the path leading to the altar into thick mud.
Many of the homes and strip malls that surround the makeshift chapel in McGonigle Canyon are just a few years old.
"This is a 25-year-old problem, but now that new housing projects are right on top of them, it has brought more attention to it," said San Diego police Capt. Boyd Long. "This is just scratching the surface of a much bigger problem: immigration, which is something our nation is struggling to deal with."
Anti-illegal immigration activists have tried to accelerate the evictions. They collected pay stubs in the canyons and called a boycott of the companies listed on them -- nurseries, farms, a landscaping company. A sticker on a post that once supported a basketball hoop reads "No Amnesty to Illegal Aliens."
Canyon squatters were estimated to have numbered in the hundreds, even thousands, in the 1980s.
In Carlsbad, a city of 100,000 some 35 miles north of San Diego, police closed a migrant camp of about 20 huts in June because big homes, a new golf course and new trail system made it impossible for them to stay, police Cpl. Kevin Lehan said. He estimates squatters in the city have dwindled from 300 in 1996 to fewer than 100.
"The landowners and farmers are selling out because it's a lot more lucrative to sell your land for multimillion-dollar homes than to grow poinsettias," Lehan said.
Developers were required to preserve the canyon as open space to win permission to build, but now police-installed fences block cars from driving in. One developer, D.R. Horton Inc. of Fort Worth, Texas, has peppered huts with signs that warn squatters their belongings may be hauled away at any time.
The altar -- covered with blue, gold and pink tiles portraying the Virgin of Guadalupe -- sits along the stream in front of four rows of wooden benches and six picnic tables. The church plans to destroy it as soon as the ground is dry.
Some squatters have already moved to nearby canyons; others sleep in the tomato fields.
Some decided to chip in about $100 a month to share an apartment, but Juan Ramirez said that would mean less money to send home to his wife and three children in Mexico.
"My children are studying, and they need pencils. They don't have enough money," he said. Ramirez makes $6.75 an hour plucking tomatoes six days a week, and sends two-thirds of his wages to his family while he sleeps under a tarp tied to trees. It's a slim return on the $2,000 he paid a smuggler to sneak him across the border last summer.
Other migrants live in ramshackle camps elsewhere in the country, but few live next to exquisite homes like those overlooking McGonigle Canyon. Just north of the canyon lies Rancho Santa Fe, where the median home price is $2.8 million. For San Diego County as a whole, the median home price this year is $575,000.
Homeowner Julie Adams, an outspoken critic of the squatters, said the huts pose fire and safety risks.
"It's a transient camp in the middle of the community and that shouldn't be allowed," said Adams, whose husband and son stopped mountain biking on trails in the canyons because they felt unsafe.
Other homeowners are sympathetic.
"They get kicked out of one place and go to another," said Barry Martin, 54, a retired airline pilot. "As long as people are willing to hire them, as long as there are jobs, they'll be around."
The priest told his parishioners at the recent Mass that he would follow them.
"Even though you find yourselves strangers in another land, we pray that you will still feel welcome from some," Fawcett said.
"..........the bodies that house them have committed crimes."
Nonsense. The body is a vehicle controlled by the soul, inner being or whatever else you want to call it. By your logic, when that Muslim plowed through crowds of students a while back to "kill as many infidels as possible", it was the cars fault.
Elliot Spagat of AP offers biased article on border watchers Here's the second paragraph of the AP article "Civilian patrols branch out, though poll finds opposition" from Elliot Spagat:
Many of the hundreds who make up the self-appointed civilian patrols monitoring the border to deter smuggling of people and drugs are unemployed or underemployed ex-military men who have long resented Mexicans who come to the United States illegally and, in their view, compete for jobs, crowd hospitals and schools and threaten English as the nation's dominant language.
Let's analyze that to the extent that our patience will allow. "Hundreds" implies at least two hundred, right? What subset of two hundred people would you consider "many"? Ten? No, that won't do. "Many" would have to be at the very least thirty or fourty. Did Spagat interview that many people and can he say they all share that profile?
And, is Spagat sure that the "resentment" is directed at the illegal aliens themselves? Even if some is directed at them, isn't most of it directed at those leaders who enable massive illegal immigration?
And, is it only "in their view" that those illegal aliens do the things specified, or aren't those facts?
The AP does mention some of the harrasment those on the other side inflicted on the border watchers, but I'm still waiting for anyone in the MSM to do a similar piece on the pro-Mexico, open borders types. It doesn't have to be a hit piece at all. Just something telling the truth would be very damaging to those who oppose the MMP and similar groups.
If the AP doesn't do that, shouldn't we just assume that they're completely biased? Let's send an email to feedback@ap.org and encourage them to provide their readers with the whole truth.
Hell, this was big news way back in 2003 at Christmas time.
Migrant camps to be razed near Rancho Penasquitos
December 24, 2003Though many migrant workers did not know it this week, city workers are preparing to evict them and raze their makeshift camps at McGonigle Canyon near Rancho Penasquitos.
San Diego police Officer Boris Martinez, the department's migrant liaison officer, said Tuesday that there have been complaints from neighbors about people living in the canyon. Martinez said he has notified Mexican Consul officials about the forthcoming evictions.
[see post 18]
Mahoney is not the Church. Mahoney is a disgrace but is not the Church and is not a reason for banning the Church from ministering to souls, wherever they are. Some Episcopalian ministers are outright antiAmerican and the next thing to Communists. That is not a legitimate reason for banning the Episcopalian Church from conducting services for unapproved people. Yall have some strange views about freedom of religion and the purposes of religion.
And, I suspect, that is what should occur in the confessional, at least. Enforcing the law is not the responsibility of the Church and it is not for the Church to be directed by outside individuals who are miffed. The Catholic Church also has in its congregation practicing felons and Congressmen from Massachusetts. Would you ban the Church from ministering to people of whom you disapprove? Silly question. Obviously you would, at least for certain categories. Remember these people, by the act of wetbackery are not even felons. Their crime is defined in the law is misdemeanor, however reprehensible that is to you and me.
"heir crime is defined in the law is misdemeanor, however reprehensible that is to you and me."
Unlawful REENTRY is a felony. Aiding and abetting illegal aliens is a felony. Identity theft and tax fraud are felonies.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.