Saturday, January 3, 2009

Immigration groups clash in Dana Point

Minutemen, anti-Minutemen and day laborers protest and argue outside Ganahl Lumber.


By CHRIS DAINES
The Orange County Register


DANA POINT – Three groups clashed in verbal protest over immigration as they lined the streets of Doheny Park Road in Capistrano Beach Saturday.

Members of the anti-illegal immigration Minuteman Project demonstrated with flags in a group of more than 20 at an informal day laborer pick-up site near Ganahl Lumber.

About a dozen day workers at the site then moved north along the road to get work while trying to steer clear of the antagonistic shouting between flag-waving Minutemen and about five anti-Minutemen protesters.

Raymond Herrera, a national rally spokesman for the Minuteman Project, said that Saturday's protest was about raising awareness and encouraging people to sign a letter to the Dana Point mayor, which asks that the city take action regarding the gathering place for day laborers.

"We're here to raise the issue with the American people about the American employers," he said. "The illegal workers are here because of immoral American employers."

San Clemente resident Chris McCormack said he heard about the planned Minuteman protest in advance and decided to show up to support the human side of the immigration debate.

"The ideas the Minuteman group espouse such as intolerance, stereotyping people of Latino descent and xenophobia are not only dangerous, but deadly and leads to people dying and families being separated."

A few tense moments occurred when a Minuteman member approached day laborers up close with a small camera. They responded with shouts and obscene gestures, and a loud argument ensued.

San Juan resident Cheryl Burns joined the Minuteman Project in 2005.

"I started seeing American jobs disappearing," she said. "Our schools are nothing anymore, the colleges are nothing. Everything is slanted toward a socialist agenda. We're going in the toilet, becoming a Third World country and being murdered in our own streets, and our government doesn't even care."

McCormack said that flaws do exist in the immigration system, but objects to the tactics of the Minuteman Project.

"We need comprehensive and humane immigration reform – I don't think anyone would argue against that."


www.ocregister.com