Czech immigrant behind Minuteman group sees a difference with Mexico
By ART HOVEY / Lincoln Journal Star

Look back 25 years and you could say that Dimitrij Krynsky was on the other side of the fence, in body and in mind.

Twice imprisoned and twice freed by the Soviet occupiers of Czechoslovakia, the man in his early 40s was desperate to find a way to sneak across a closed border with his wife and their 3-year-old son.

Claiming to be on vacation, they eventually got past security guards in neighboring Romania and Yugoslavia and chose the United States as the place to start a new life.

Twenty-five years later, the 68-year-old retired welder looks ahead to Monday night and his efforts to start a Lincoln chapter of an organization dedicated to stemming the flow of immigrants across the Mexican border.

Perched on a kitchen stool for two hours in his house near 48th and South, Krynsky considers many questions, including an obvious one about what makes the desperation different for a Czech immigrant of 1981 and a Latino immigrant of 2006.

“I understand completely why Latino people would like to go to the United States,” he said. “The main difference between them and us is that we were going only to those countries that were willing to accept us.”

Krynsky agreed to an interview recently as a way to draw attention to an attempt to form a Minuteman chapter in Lincoln.

If the meeting proceeds as planned, those who show up at 6:30 p.m. at the Bennet Martin Public Library will hear about Minuteman’s impassioned demands to secure the Mexican border.

They will learn of its opposition to any immigration policy that offers what its leadership regards as amnesty for people who already have crossed the border illegally.

If they press Krynsky for his personal views on immigration, they will find his thinking has undergone a major transformation since April.

That’s when Hispanic throngs clogged the streets of Los Angeles, Chicago and other major U.S. cities to call for immigration reform. Much of the focus in those settings, and in similar marches in Omaha and Lincoln, was on citizenship for millions who had crossed the border illegally to find jobs.

“At that time, it was a wake-up call for me,” he said. “Until this time, I live in a mood of sorry for these people.”

He couldn’t understand how marchers who had broken the law crossing the border could claim a right to be here.

“This is where, according to my position, they crossed the line.”

Krynsky, whose father was a Seventh-day Adventist minister in Czechoslovakia, said he’s not motivated by racism or hatred of any kind. He said he feels sorry for anybody trying to escape poverty.

“But my sorry has some border. And this border is I would genuinely like my grandchildren to live in the United States and not in something like Great Mexico.”

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While others who favor immigration reform might accept those views as sincere, that doesn’t mean they accept Minuteman as a reasonable voice in a national debate.

The Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center portrays the group, nationally, as cast from the same mold as the Ku Klux Klan.

One of the membership brochures Krynsky offers as background information says a $50 registration fee will be waived for those who can present a copy of a license to carry a concealed weapon.

Darcy Tromanhauser of the Lincoln-based Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest is among local Minuteman critics.

“It seems to me they are a hate group, pure and simple,” said Tromanhauser, who heads Appleseed’s Immigration Integration and Civic Participation Program.

“And I think, when you listen to them, it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to know they’re more about hate than they are about good public policy.”

A border fence and other simplistic solutions might suit Minuteman members, she said, but reality is more complicated.

“They imply that people coming now are coming illegally, whereas others who came before them all came legally.”

But immigration policy is more restrictive now than it was a century ago. “It used to be that all you had to do was show up, provide a name, prove that you didn’t have a communicable disease, and you’re in.”

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If Minuteman makes it in Lincoln, its success could be the result of the strength of a chapter already in place in Omaha.

A major force in building a base of operations there is Dennis Murphy, who moved from Nevada in December 2005, helped start an Omaha chapter in March and now serves as state director.

“I know we’ve gotten considerable response from Lincoln already,” Murphy said, “and I’ve spoken to many people down there. A lot of people are interested and concerned about the issue, but very often they don’t want to take charge or take leadership.”

While others question Minuteman’s motives, Murphy is focused on drafting state legislation he expects to have ready by the time the Legislature convenes in January.

The emphasis will be on workplace and housing enforcement. It will be on cracking down on employers and landlords who are breaking laws and encouraging an even bigger wave of illegal border crossings.

Although immigration laws have been largely national in scope up to now, Murphy said, it doesn’t have to be that way. At least, according to him, states, counties and cities “have full authority to engage in issues of illegal immigration.”

And, said Murphy, there is plenty to engage in. He and others from Minuteman’s ranks in Nebraska are investigating.

“There are major national names, household names, that have consistently been flagrant violators of employment practices.”

He was not willing to go into detail with those allegations. But he said jobs and housing are magnets for people who enter the country illegally, Murphy said.

“And if those issues are addressed, then the issue of illegal immigration will definitely begin to abate of its own national accord.”

Lourdes Gouveia, an immigration specialist at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, disputed Murphy’s view of non-federal immigration law.

“It’s not legal,” Gouveia said. “None of those entities have any jurisdiction to make immigration law. Only the federal government, up to this time, is charged with making immigration law.”

Gouveia acknowledged some local officials trying to encroach on that turf.

“It’s very consistent with the approach of the Minuteman, which is to take the law into their own hands.”

But back in Lincoln, retired union member Krynsky sees things differently. And he’s not persuaded that illegal immigrants are taking jobs that nobody else wants. If wages were where they should be, he says, others would want them.

“I would like to emphasize the moral aspect of this problem,” he said. “The moral aspect is that I would hate for America to lose its identity. And I hate to exist in a society that depends on almost slave exploitation.”

Reach Art Hovey at 523-4949 or ahovey@alltel.net.
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