POSTED ON Wednesday, April 29, 2009 AT 11:39PM


Anti-illegal immigration groups send distress signal
by David Lester
Yakima Herald-Republic
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ANDY SAWYER/Yakima Herald-Republic
Joe Ray of the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps and Bob West of Grassroots of Yakima Valley Monday, April 27, 2009.



YAKIMA, Wash. -- Bob West took a half-day off from work when Mexican President Vicente Fox visited Yakima three years ago. He wanted to see the community reaction when the motorcade with Fox and Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire drove by his vantage point at 40th and Washington avenues.

He didn't like what he saw. It was something of a life-changing experience for West.

"The people there were cheering for the (Mexican) president," he said, adding some were insulting opponents of illegal immigration.

"I thought to myself, here it is the United States of America and they are badmouthing us. It didn't seem quite right to me."

The experience roused him to join a small group, Grassroots of Yakima Valley, the area's most public anti-illegal immigration group.

A Wiley City area resident, West, 67, is now chairman of the group that says it has a membership of about 150 people.

Grassroots wants the United States to secure its borders and enforce immigration laws. It opposes amnesty for illegal immigrants and favors prosecuting employers who hire those without legal status.

The group argues that agriculture wants to continue relying on undocumented workers because it's cheaper and quicker than recruiting legal residents or using a guest worker program.

That characterization is disputed by Mike Gempler, executive director of the Washington Growers League, which represents agriculture employers.

Efforts to use United States workers have been unsuccessful, but not because of wages, he said.

Rather it's the work's seasonal nature, the physical labor and the fact that the work is outside that keep Americans from applying, said Gempler, who estimates undocumented workers comprise from 50 to 70 percent of the agricultural work force.

The industry favors controlling the border, but as part of a larger initiative granting amnesty to those who have worked in agriculture and would continue to do so for up to three years after obtaining legal status.

"The United States has benefited and the economy has benefited, a lot of wealth has been created because of the work done by people who came here illegally," Gempler said. "Our immigration laws haven't been enforced. People have been allowed to settle and I think there needs to be fair treatment of those people."

West said he understands Gempler's position, but he rejects it as a slap in the face to those who immigrated legally.

"It makes the people who came through the legal process and did things right look like damn fools," West said.

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Another Grassroots goal is to educate the public about the effects of illegal immigration -- billions spent on social, medical and educational services, depressed wages caused by a large pool of illegal workers, drugs, drive-by shootings, gangs and graffiti.

Those problems aren't entirely driven by illegal immigration, West concedes, but it does play a role.

"It's not just bad for us, it's bad for them," he said. "They work at the lowest end of the wage scale. They are being used by large and small businesses and reducing our quality of life."

What's troubling to West is that the general population isn't responding to what he says is the threat illegal immigration poses to the country.

"I don't know why people aren't rioting in the streets about this," said West, shaking his head.

Since Fox's visit in May 2006, West has been active. He sought petition signatures last year for Initiative 409, an initiative to the Legislature that would have prohibited illegal immigrants from obtaining state driver's licenses and denied them public benefits. It also would have required employers to verify the prospective employee's immigration status. The initiative failed to attract enough signatures.

The issue is back this year in the form of Initiative 1043, an initiative to the people. The measure will need 241,000 valid signatures to make the November ballot. Yakama Nation member Wendell Hannigan started the initiative drive.

West also has lobbied the Legislature to block in-state tuition rates for students who aren't citizens.

He's also demonstrated against immigrant rights marches. On Friday, he and other Grassroots members will be at the corner of First Street and Yakima Avenue from 3 to 5 p.m., conducting a counter demonstration to the fourth annual march. Their counter demonstration is scheduled to end at the time the march begins from Miller Park in order to avoid a confrontation.

West, who describes himself as a political independent, also has broadened his political activism. He and Joe Ray of Yakima, state director of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, helped organized the two Tea Party rallies in Yakima earlier this month.

The rallies criticized the federal bank bailout plan and the size of the $800 billion federal stimulus package.

What he is not, West insists, is a racist.

"I just don't think racism is a driving force behind us," he said, calling such charges personally hurtful.

He said critics level that charge when they have nothing else for which to criticize groups like his.

West said he experienced racism growing up in Chicago, the grandson of Polish immigrants living in a predominantly African-American and Italian neighborhood.

Once, West said, he was confronted by two young black men and had a knife held to his throat.

"I was a minority. I know what it looks like," he said.

He said he also witnessed prejudice against black sailors during his 10 years in the Navy.

For his part, Ray, 67 and also a Navy veteran, said the nationwide Minuteman Civil Defense Corps has leadership that includes blacks and Hispanics.

"It's not a racial thing. It's a law thing and a fairness thing," Ray said.

The corps claims a membership of 250 statewide and 14,000 across the country. Group members periodically conduct border watches to report illegal immigration. A border watch by the state group near the Canadian border is planned for later this summer.

The Minuteman group also will hold a counter demonstration on Friday, but unlike the Grassroots group, their event is timed to last a half-hour longer in order to coincide with the passing march.

Ray said he got involved with the corps about three years ago when his job took him into the schools to repair printing equipment. There, he said he saw bilingual education being taught. He said people choosing to live in the United States should learn to speak English.

West comes by his views partially from an environmental perspective. A retired employee of the Yakima Regional Clean Air Agency, West said he has been an environmentalist and is concerned about the effects of population growth.

He tried to start a local chapter of the environmental group Sierra Club and operated a fledgling business selling solar panels, one he had to give up when it wouldn't pay the bills.

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He said the world needs to slow the pace of population growth.

"At some point, there is going to be a crash. We will use up the oxygen and the water will be polluted so badly that there will be a collapse," he said. "Population control is a dirty word. But no one is talking about the ramifications of it."

West and Ray argue the best solution to illegal immigration is for the Mexican government and the Mexican people to start improving the lot of their own people.

"We can't be the lifeboat for the world," West said.

Both men say they are troubled by what they see as the reluctance by Mexican immigrants to assimilate into the American culture. West said the demand that he learn English was drilled into him from a young age by his immigrant grandparents.

Ray said he grew up in the fertile San Joaquin Valley of California, picking fruit and cotton. He said it didn't occur to him it was a bad life, it was what life was about.

"We had no guarantees. We had the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. No one in the United States born and raised or legalized should expect anything more," he said. "No one in the United States illegally should expect anything at all except the most expeditious removal as possible."



* David Lester can be reached at 509-577-7674 or dlester@yakimaherald.com.



Demonstrations

* Two very different demonstrations are planned in Yakima on Friday. One urges rights and amnesty for illegal immigrants; the other is adamantly opposed.

* Thursday: The immigration issue viewed through the perspective of two anti-illegal immigration groups that oppose amnesty and want immigration laws enforced.

* Wednesday: Another view of illegal immigration, from the perspective of a family that came to this country illegally and raised three U.S.-born children. To read Wednesday's story, visit www.yakimaherald.com.

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