D’accord.

Personally I think taking a look at US businesses that are suspected of hiring illegal immigrants is exactly what needs to happen. If the government needs a hand from interested citizens I don’t see the problem, as long as individual rights are being crushed.

These businesses that hire illegal immigrants, whether they are brown or not, are certainly breaking the law and providing bait to entice people outside of our borders to break the law as well. These businesses prey on people whose biggest sin is trying to earn more money to support their families. While they pay them much less than they would have to pay US citizens and offer them less in benefits, if any at all, they profit from raping both the American worker and the poor person who doesn’t yet have the rights or the feeling of security to challenge their employer.

IMO anyone that would do anything to protect the companies that hire undocumented workers is more of a bigot than these ” vigilantes.”

Look if our economy is so dependent on cheap labor, fine, fast track the citizenship of those needed so desperately. I couldn’t care less what color the guy is that is stacking bricks or serving you your chimichanga, but they do need to be here legally.

“They do nothing worse than the lower class white people do, so whats the deal?” Not a strong argument AT, and maybe a bit racist.

Heh.

And for what it’s worth - the similarities to the Klan and these Minutemen- it’s racial intimidation.

Ye may know them by the company they keep:

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=557
http://www.adl.org/PresRele/Extremism_72/4255_72.asp

http://www.minutemanproject.com/default.asp?contentID=1

The problem that I have with this story is that it is pretty specific until it mentions the minuteman project. “…there have been reports of Tennessee Minutemen members impersonating police officers, and attempting to turn in Hispanics to local immigration enforcement.” Who reported it? When was it reported?

I don’t know anything at all except for what I have read online and seen on television about these Minuteman project guys, but I still don’t see any signs that they are doing anything to convince me that “it’s racial intimidation.”

Sounds to me as if you guys disagree with their politics and would like to strengthen your argument against them by linking them to crazy militia groups and hate groups. If they are in fact in anyway tied to any hate group, and they may be, I will gladly apologize for wasting your time.

Given these absences, and the reality of the rallies they do hold, which malign immigrants legal
or not, then, however mistakenly, I see them as a source of intimidation.

Local police chief Roger Overholt also termed their group as part of a ‘credible threat” when state,
local and federal officers surrounded an anti-illegal immigrant rally in May of this year.

Since you’ve been so uptight on links, and argument strengtheners, theres some stuff for you.
However, the jist of this thing is what I said up there, I want you to tell me that you believe, head to toes, that the first and foremost motivator in this thing is something other than racism. The Minutemen represent those who don’t want these dirty Mexicans dating their daughters, and you and I (and Joe) know it. The rest of it is window dressing.
I got no beef with Mexicans, and I think that informs my opinion of illegal immigration.

I’m interested in you honestly answering my question.

AT, have you bothered to read what the Minutemen say about themselves on their website? http://www.minutemanproject.com/default.asp?contentID=2
Sorry man, I don’t see anything racist about this group on its face. I have no doubt that there are a bunch of gun toting toothless goobers that would like to identify with this group because the action that they take at the border is obviously opposing a group of people that aren’t white. That doesn’t make this group or their actions racist.

You list your summary of reasons why the KKK and the MmP were formed, but you didn’t get either of them right. The KKK was formed for the reasons that you mentioned and many more. The MmP was formed for the reasons listed in the link above.
The way I see it, the KKK was formed by a bunch of people that wanted to, by using illegal means, stop others that weren’t breaking the law. The MmP was started by people that want to use legal means to stop others that most certainly are breaking the law.

You can bait me with all the “Brown People” speak all you want but my arguments are not racist and neither are the actions that you and Joe have attributed to the MmP.

“However, the jist of this thing is what I said up there, I want you to tell me that you believe, head to toes, that the first and foremost motivator in this thing is something other than racism. The Minutemen represent those who don’t want these dirty Mexicans dating their daughters, and you and I (and Joe) know it. The rest of it is window dressing.”

“I’m interested in you honestly answering my question.”
I would be lying if I told you that I knew what the “first and foremost motivator in this thing is,” other than to say that until I learn that this group is doing something racist, I will take them at their published word. What the Minutemen represent to you and Joe is obviously something different from what they represent to me, so I can only answer for myself here and say that for me the motivator is not racism. If anyone thinks it is then they don’t know me very well at all.

As the great Forrest Gump said, “That’s all I’ve got to say about that.”

I don’t know if any of you all listened to the NPR piece, but what it brings out is the haphazard way they go about executing their mission. For instance the reporter references their tactic of going to E.R.s and taking pictures of folks they claim are illegals. How exactly do you recognize an illegal sitting in an E.R.?

Daco, I’ll agree w/ you that we are a nation of laws. That can’t be taken too lightly. That’s where the Minutemen get questionable in my book. They’re vigilantes. Let’s let our duly elected officials uphold our laws and let’s hold our sherriffs, etc, accountable. We don’t need, as you said, a “bunch of gun toting toothless goobers” going about protecting mama and apple pie.

There’s not much more dangerous than a do-gooder with a gun.

Ordinarily I would agree that our elected and appointed officials should be trusted to do their jobs. How many undocumented aliens do they say are in the U.S. right now? Millions? Are our elected and appointed officials doing their jobs?

And as for the overall impact of the Minutemen — it seems their efforts might best be served
if they protested wherever Bush appeared in public, or challenged their reps in Congress.

Until his I’m Gonna Reform Immigration speech this spring, his administration had prosecuted
3 companies for violating immigration laws, whereas during Clinton’s tenure, the number was over 200.

“Between 1999 and 2003, work-site enforcement operations were scaled back 95 percent by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which subsequently was merged into the Homeland Security Department. The number of employers prosecuted for unlawfully employing immigrants dropped from 182 in 1999 to four in 2003, and fines collected declined from $3.6 million to $212,000, according to federal statistics.

“In 1999, the United States initiated fines against 417 companies. In 2004, it issued fine notices to three.”

The link for the story:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/18/AR2006061800613.html?referrer=email&referrer=email

I’d amend that, in my case, to ‘it would appear that I don’t see illegal immigration as a major concern of our day, or as a threat to the nation’.
It ain’t easy to come over the border. People are still doing it. I like the approach of seeing if we can help Mexico maybe not suck so much that people want to take a 2 day hike across a desert and risk getting arrested by foreign law officers. I fail to see why people are getting worked up over it in 2006, and call it a 100% “don’t look in the middle east, or at the economy or gas prices for that matter” snow job for the election year. A mountain out of a molehill, if you will.
Sure, I’d love to stop illegal immigration, right after we fix health care, figure out a decent SSI patch for my sorry ass in 50 or so years, ease dependance on foreign oil, curb these tendancies to get high school kids killed in Eden, and _____________ (add your own genuine problem here).
Yesterday, we were talking about the whole brown fear thing, and I suppose its just going to have to be a bone of contention. I would still maintain, but could never prove, that the motivator for just about everybody adamantly resolving to chuck illegals out of the country is either light racism, or strong ethnocentrism, and there isn’t much excuse for either in 2006.
Is a job threatened? Well, maybe that shiny capitalist system needs some more bondo.

I think that I agree with you guys on many more points than we disagree, but I sure as hell have had fun poking a sharp stick atcha.

BTW Joe, thanks for the link and the clarification.