Thread: Minuteman meets the migrants on TV

Subject: Antelope Valley Press California Interview of Minuteman Frank Jorge


THIRTY DAYS' - Frank Jorge is a member of the Minuteman Project border
group. He spent a month living in an East Los Angeles apartment with a
family of seven illegal Mexican immigrants.

GENE BRECKNER/Valley Press
Minuteman meets the migrants on TV
Man says show misrepresents his real views
This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press on Sunday, August 20,
2006.

By TITUS GEE
Valley Press Staff Writer
At 4, Francisco Jorge immigrated legally from Guantanamo, Cuba, to Miami.

At 14, he reported his first illegal immigrant to authorities.

Now a member of the Minuteman Project , an activist group that opposes
illicit immigration, Jorge recently spent 30 days living with a family
of illegal immigrants in Los Angeles. The month was filmed for "30
Days" a television show from FX that was created by Morgan Spurlock of
"Super Size Me" fame.

Jorge's views on immigration did not shift as a result of that
experience, he said, contrary to the impression given by the show.

"In spite of getting to know the family and having bonded with them,"
Jorge said, "the intellectual aspect of my person was - then as it is
now - completely against their being here."

Jorge, a 55-year-old electronics technician who lives in Mojave, said
his experience was manipulated through the video-editing process.

"The '30 Days' people … decided that they wanted it to have a soft
ending," he said. "To that end they took out every single anti-illegal
immigration statement I made from the time I got to Mexico all the way
to the end. I had actually stepped up my efforts."

Standing in Mexico, in front of the squalid former abode of his host
family, Jorge said: "I'm sorry that they came from such a poor housing
environment, but we have a great deal of homelessness in the United
States. We have people who sleep outside on the streets of Los Angeles
with no cover whatsoever, who go to bed hungry with no electricity, no
running water. This, that I'm seeing here, is a Mexican problem that
should never, ever become an American problem."

Jorge's ideological resilience may be a result of his own experience as
an immigrant.

His family fled Cuba in 1954, just a few years before Fidel Castro
gained power on the island nation.

They did their paperwork and received green cards from the American
government.

"We experienced poverty," the former Cuban said. "My mother, my father
worked for next to nothing."

Dad was a waiter earning 25 cents an hour. Mom stayed up late doing
fine embroidery.

"I did not at all understand American culture," he said. "Of course, I
did not understand the language. That was extremely frustrating."

They moved to New York looking for work, then to New Jersey and on to
California.

"In short, I experienced everything that an illegal alien would
experience. The only thing is that we were legal," he said.

Jorge describe his childhood as a process of assimilation.

At 24, he took an oath of citizenship to the United States of America.
He now gives his name as Frank and uses an American pronunciation of
his surname (it sounds like George).

"I became more and more American," he said, "came to like it and
developed an American identity instead of a Cuban identity."

As a 14-year-old, Jorge turned in a taxi driver from Mexico who had
crossed the border illegally.

In high school, he called again.

"Just before leaving high school, I reported another person. This was a
Mexican female. She was in my high school class, but she was actually
23, 24 years of age," he said. "I reported her; they came to pick her
up … (Now) she's back here again; has been here for many years."

Being an immigrant himself only added to his feeling of responsibility,
Jorge said.

"Remembering that people got killed (in Cuba), seeing that just a few
years after we left the island … nobody really had any rights anymore.
That always impressed upon me the need to participate in what happens
in my nation and to take care that it would not be lost," he said. "I
always had an awareness that countries will disappear if they're not
defended. … Obviously that's what happened to Cuba."

After 9-11, Jorge began to meet others who felt as he did about
immigration issues. He joined Jim Gilchrist's Minuteman Project and did
stints on the border in Arizona, Texas and California. The Minuteman
groups are made up of civilian volunteers who line the border,
sometimes with firearms in hand, and report illegal border crossers to
Border Patrol agents.

It took the staff of "30 Days" five requests to get Jorge to be on the
show. Even then he only agreed at the urging of conservative talk radio
host Terry Anderson.

Jorge finally decided that being on the show could not fail to help his
cause by showing a family of illegal immigrants living happily on
American soil, and along the way he would have a rare opportunity to
understand the lives of people he believes should be deported.

He worked with the father, ate with the family and debated with the
college-bound daughter of the family.

At the end of the month, the show's producer "asked me, 'How do you
feel? You lived with this family you obviously like them.' And I said
my feelings are the same except for one thing - I realize that the
problem is worse than I ever thought," he said. "And the producer just
groaned. She couldn't believe it."

Jorge said he offered to sponsor the family in their legal application
for immigration, only if they would return to Mexico in the meantime,
he said, but he could not be moved on his immigration position.

"They have lived in Los Angeles for 12 years unchallenged, without
paying taxes, while we pay for schooling for the children" including
college for the daughter and possible Section 8 housing, he said.

Jorge believes that should not be tolerated.

While shooting the show, Jorge said, he met illegal immigrants other
than his host family, immigrants who were criminals and thugs and
communists who expressed nothing but hatred for America, yet many of
them worked as day laborers.

"With an attitude like that, I feel that these people should go back
where they came from, and I will work very hard to have them deported
before they destroy this country," he said.

Some would say a position like that makes him a traitor to his ethnic
heritage, but Jorge takes a different view.

"The answer to that is simple," he said "Before I'm a Latino, I am an
American. That is who and what I am. I took an oath to defend this
country and I will do so. In their case, they put their ethnicity
before their country, and that is why they have failed in their Third
World countries. … When they carry forth that mentality they are trying
to pound us into submission and into becoming the Third World nations
that they all fled."

Jorge recently formed the Antelope Valley Independent Minutemen. After
one week, the group has 10 members and has begun "gathering
intelligence" in areas such as Four Points, a popular pick-up zone for
day laborers.

"I've been talking to store owners who say that they have consistently
called the police to have these men removed and no one shows up," he
said. "We're gonna change that. We're gonna challenge that in the city."

Jorge already has spoken to the Palmdale City Council and plans to go
before the councils of Lancaster, Mojave and Rosamond in the near future.

"Americans should become active in the fight against illegal
immigration because if they don't they will lose this country, and they
will not like what it will be turned into," he said.

Hurray Jorge! This is a great article although I can't believe the author asked him if he was a race traitor in the middle.

Great going and we will get this on the homepage.

W

I watched this program and a friend asked what a minuteman was, my answer "a hero", but as the program progressed I got the feeling that the editor decided to twist the program outcome to his/her position on the argument. Of course my pro-illegal-immigration friend sneered and said "see even he changed his mind" but since this friend is no rocket scientist and didn't even know what a minuteman is, and at 31 has never voted in his lazy, selfish life - I'm not too worried about his little opinion. But boy I am so glad to read this interview. Whew!

We are not against Mexicans, or Latinos, we are against mass, unchecked illegal immigration. From anywhere.

Stupidity, Ignorance, and Apathy these are what is weakening this country.

Teaching history tainted against America in our schools and allowing our colleges to be taught by non-American's or worse - American's with anti-American sentiments, this is what has weakend this country over the past 30 years. This will be our downfall.

Hello velda,

Welcome to Alipac!

I thought it was a pretty nice article. I love the part about American before Latino. I feel the same way Frank. American is not a race and we are way more than surface dressing.

Dixie