Minutemen Offer Widespread Blame for Inflow of Illegals

[Woodmonkey]

Minutemen Offer Widespread Blame for Inflow of Illegals

The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps and the Minuteman Project evolved from the same origins, but have veered in different directions since their leaders first joined forces early last year.

Among the similarities, however, is their disgust for elected officials who refuse to enforce existing immigration laws.

"If our federal government is not going to respond, there's a real movement to tell Democrats and Republicans that we're not going to sit back and take it," said Chris Simcox, founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps.

"It's not political to want border security," he added. "We must demand our elected officials uphold the law."

"I don't trust either major party," said Minuteman Project leader Jim Gilchrist, adding that President Bush has disappointed millions of Americans. "It's so obvious he has no intention to preserve the sovereignty of the U.S. or protect us from criminals."

Simcox and Gilchrist are working together and separately on the issue of immigration through their respective groups, which they formed after a monthlong, 24-hour-a-day border watch in April 2005 in Palominas, Ariz. Palominas is the town where a privately owned fence is now being built to prevent border crossers from getting into the United States.

MCDC spokeswoman Connie Hair said her group decided to break ground last Saturday because it didn't want to sit around and wait any longer for the U.S. Congress to sort out its differences on immigration reform and get serious on border security.

"It's overwhelmingly a national security issue," Hair said, calling the flow of immigrants "a human tsunami over the border."

The two Minuteman groups are made up of grandparents, children, World War II veterans, pilots, accountants, doctors, teachers, cab drivers, former military, law enforcement, and border patrol, the planners said.

Those are the same people who are not only disappointed in lawmakers for not doing enough to secure the border, but are troubled that Bush supports a guest worker plan and has failed to protect the borders while at the same time complaining about a threat from terrorists, they said.

"The president could secure that border in six weeks" if he were committed, Simcox said. "Nobody connects the dots."

"We were against building a wall on the border until ... the president gave his sorry speech" earlier this year urging the Senate to pass an immigration reform plan that is weak on border security, Gilchrist said.

Nations Exporting Domestic Problems?

Congressional sources frequently cite the number of illegal immigrants at 11 million to 12 million. Simcox puts the number of illegals in the country at 20 million. Gilchrist says it's more like 30 million.

What the two men do agree on is the need to shore up the border by supporting Border Patrol, which they say is woefully underfunded and short-staffed.

Leah Yoon, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Patrol agency, said the Border Patrol has no qualms with the intentions of Americans who want border security, but is concerned that volunteer efforts at the border could do more harm than good.

"Securing the border is a dangerous task meant for highly trained law enforcement agents — Border Patrol — who are equipped to perform official duties of federal law enforcement officials. Well-intentioned individuals in an unforgiving terrain mixed with a volatile border environment can become counter productive to securing our nation's borders," Yoon's agency offered in a written statement.

But the leaders say lax border control results in a bevy of problems, including terrorism, tax evasion and a strain on government services. On top of that, drug cartels are basically operating unimpeded along the southern U.S. border, said Gilchrist.

Gilchrist said he hopes the next private monthlong border patrol operation by Minuteman volunteers this October will be outside of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, across the Rio Grande River from Laredo, Texas. Nuevo Laredo is the town of about 300,000 residents where 11 police officers have been murdered this year, bringing the total since Jan. 1 to 116 people slain there.

"It's just a stone's throw across our border and that corruption is seeping in," he said, adding he wants to go after criminal cartels to "expose cartels down there for the murdering savages that they are."

Hair said that tacit endorsement by the Mexican government has contributed to the influx of illegals hopping the border. She alleged that MCDC volunteers have been fired upon by people dressed as Mexican military and paramilitary who are guarding drug shipments. She said the Mexican government is lax at enforcing its own drug laws because it has "billions, with a 'B,' dollars at stake. It's corruption."

She also charged the U.S. government with telling the Mexican foreign ministry the locations of MCDC volunteers along the border, a claim vehemently denied by officials at the Department of Homeland Security.

"Border Patrol does not report activity by civilian, non-law enforcement groups to the government of Mexico. During a detention of a legal or illegal immigrant that produces an allegation of improper treatment, Border Patrol reports the allegation and allows the appropriate consulate to interview the individual in custody. This is consistent with the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations of 1963. ... U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Border Patrol continues to appreciate the efforts of civilians who contact law enforcement authorities regarding suspicious activity," said the agency in a written statement.

Separately, Yoon noted that Border Patrol agents wouldn't jeopardize members of the communities they are protecting.

"There is a relationship between the Border Patrol and border communities all along the southern border. They share the same communities ... go to the same churches, their kids go to the same schools so nobody wants to be adversarial with each other," she said.

Tim Bueler, spokesman for the Minuteman Project, said the Mexican government is complicit in illegal immigration by offering Matricula Consular cards, IDs given to illegals that are accepted by financial institutions as proof of identification and allow illegal immigrants access to U.S. financial services.

Hair said stopping the flow of illegal immigrants would end the $50 billion annually in remittances by illegals in the United States to families at home, and that would also require countries to get serious about their own economies.

"It's a way to subsidize their poor at home. They slough them off for our taxpayers to subsidize," she said.

On a more philosophical note, Gilchrist argued the immigration problem exists because everyone wants a piece of the American dream, and other nations aren't doing enough to create their own.

"Create an American dream in Mexico and call it a Mexican dream," he said, for instance, or one in Vietnam and call it a Vietnamese dream.

No Help From Capitol Hill?

Hair said the MCDC has gotten zero response from lawmakers to invitations to come to the southern border and investigate the situation themselves, though some lawmakers, like Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., chairman of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, and Rep. Charlie Norwood, R-Ga., have been responsive and sympathetic to their grassroots brigade.

Representatives of both MCDC and the Minuteman Project say the guest worker program passed by the Senate, called "amnesty" by opponents, will only encourage more illegals to come to the United States.

"Since these guys on the East Coast, these senators started talking of amnesty, traffic across the river has increased at least threefold, maybe fivefold," said Michael Vickers, a veterinarian and director of the Texas Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. Vickers owns a property close to the Rio Grande as well as two other ranches farther north. He said he sees dozens of illegals pass through his properties each week.

"Thirty million illegal aliens are occupying [the United States]. Amnesty will invite another 120 [million] to 150 million," Gilchrist said. Using those numbers, "by 2025, more illegal aliens will be occupying U.S. territories than we will have legal voters."

"First we shore up the dyke and the levee and then we figure out what to do with 20 million people," Simcox said, adding, "We understand that a temporary worker program is a reality."

"If we enforce the laws that are already on the books, most people would self-deport. ... If we can stop the bleeding, then we can see who we've got. We've never been against immigrants.

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[Forlorn Hope]

Originally Posted by Woodmonkey

Minutemen Offer Widespread Blame for Inflow of Illegals


the flow of illegal immigrants would end the $50 billion annually in remittances by illegals in the United States to families at home, and that would also require countries to get serious about their own economies.

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If we detain the the illegals rather than deport them, we could take some of the profit out of this.