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Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Minutemen plan border action
Two-month-long event is aimed at persuading voters to make border illegal immigration the key to selecting candidates.

By SORAYA SARHADDI NELSON and CHARLES PROCTOR
The Orange County Register

SACRAMENTO — Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist said today that his group plans a mass action at the Laredo, Texas, border beginning Sept. 11 to try and persuade voters to make illegal immigration their litmus test at the ballot box this fall.

The Aliso Viejo accountant and Vietnam veteran who has become a national hero to opponents of illegal immigration said a "couple thousand" Minutemen will gather to monitor the border and report suspicious activity to the authorities, acting as the "world's largest neighborhood watch group" through Nov. 7.

Gilchrist told the Sacramento Press Club gathering that the starting date and location were selected to highlight the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks coupled with growing crime and cartels spilling over from the Mexican side of the border.

"I want to bring global awareness, if not at least national awareness, to what's happening in Mexico," said Gilchrist, who is releasing a book Tuesday on the Minutemen's assault on illegal immigration. "Why is that a country where 50 percent of its people want to leave? And they all want to come to the United States because there's nothing for them south of the border."

Neither the Bush Administration, Congress nor Gov. Schwarzenegger is serious about stopping the flow of illegal immigrants, he added, calling the recent deployment of 6,000 National Guard members along the border a "token illusion of security."

Six times as many would be needed to have any real effect, he estimated.

Instead, elected officials are stymied by businesses' attraction of cheap labor from the south, which he described as the "21st century slave trade."

Gilchrist also criticized Schwarzenegger's planned trade mission to Mexico next month, describing the trip as little more than an occasion for him "to look good and sound good."

A spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger, who last year praised the MInutemen as doing a "terrific job," did not comment on the Texas plan or Gilchrist's criticism of the trade mission.

"The governor has been clear that securing our border is a shared responsibility between the United States and Mexico," said the spokeswoman, Julie Soderlund, who is the press secretary for his re-election campaign. "The governor's position on the Minutemen is that the failure of the federal government to act has given rise to such initiatives."

Some analysts say the Minutemen's strategy of targeting this year's general election as a way to shift immigration policy is misguided.

Louis DeSipio, chairman of the Chicano/Latino Studies department at UC Irvine, said Republican incumbents in Congress, for example, will likely face Democratic challengers who are softer on illegal immigration than they are. And Democratic incumbents are generally running in districts dominated by their party.

Targeting the primary would have been more effective, he said. "If they had been able to anticipate this six to eight months ago and build upon the negative reaction to the pro-immigrant marches in April and May, then you might have seen a situation where immigration moderates were unseated by more hardliners," DeSipio said.

Nor will the Minutemen's Texas plan effectively stave the flow of immigrants, said Nativo Lopez, president of Los Angeles-based Mexican American Political Association, which opposes Gilchrist's group. "The best enforcement measure frankly is legalizing the status of those already here and developing bilateral agreements that will allow laborers to register and enter the country legally," he said.

Gilchrist also said he:

• Opposes banning illegal immigrants from serving in the U.S. military because there are more important priorities.

• Won't target American employers of illegal immigrants for fear of lawsuits and civil rights complaints, given it's difficult for a lay person to know for sure who is here legally and who is not. "I don't want to hang an innocent man," he said.

• Doesn't believe a wall at the border is needed if enforcement is beefed up.