A couple weeks old, this piece on the Minuteman project by the Weekly Standard’s Matt Labash is nevertheless worth highlighting. From “North of the Border”:
IF GUYS LIKE CHRIS SIMCOX seem a bit tightly wound about our border being in crisis, it’s because he lives there, and it is. This he demonstrates by taking me out one night on patrol in the Huachuca Mountains and San Pedro River Valley. With us are a few Minutemen and one Minutewoman, Carmen Mercer, who’s originally from Germany and became a naturalized citizen. Not paid a dime, and often fronting her own costs, she estimates she’s been out on 800 to 1,000 border missions, sometimes two a day, when she’s not running the OK Café. “You can imagine how much time is left for sleep,” she says.
As we duck under barbed-wire fences and plod through the prickly pear, greasewood, and mesquite brush, the desert sky opens up like a black picnic blanket punched through with electric pinholes. Simcox works the land like an expert tracker, able to tell how long it’s been since illegal traffic has moved through. He says a strong Minuteman presence in the region has mostly shut it down, even though as we speak, Border Patrol hops on a fresh batch just one culvert down from us.
It’s a bit of a nostalgia tour, as Simcox relates one grisly tale after another about the people they find abandoned by heartless coyotes, the mostly Mexican smugglers who charge about $1,500 a head to move migrants through the daunting mountain passes, but who often split at the first sign of trouble. He tells me about the raped women and dehydrated babies and dead bodies that are constantly getting pulled out of the desert. Nearly 200 dead illegals have been found this year in Arizona alone. Simcox’s strict Standard Operations Procedure manual bans Rambos and “Ninja Turtles,” and his outfit enforces a “no-contact policy,” meaning that to avoid any trouble or violence, which would surely undo the Minutemen with their legions of critics, volunteers are only to report the whereabouts of illegals to Border Patrol, and let them do the rest.
But the Minutemen are often forced to violate this policy to save migrants from death. Sometimes the illegals are so near expiration, after getting lost on a two or three-day walk through the desert, that they ask to be turned in. Ten aliens died on this stretch of border the weekend before my arrival. Out over the Fourth of July, Simcox’s group saved one illegal by giving him water before turning him in, and found an unlucky comrade several yards away.
In the Tumbleweed’s next issue, on the page after the crossword puzzle, he ran a photo of the cadaver. Just days gone, the body was already a sack of bones held together by paper-thin, shriveled skin. The man was missing a foot, his skull picked clean by wild animals. And he was in good shape, comparatively speaking. Sometimes, when bodies are found in the near-120-degree heat, they’re so decomposed that their sex isn’t identifiable. In the caption, Simcox blamed Bush, John McCain, and others who refuse to support securing our borders with military troops, for the man’s senseless death.
Simcox points out various arroyos and washes where illegals who make it across lay up after being delivered by their coyote to wait for a ride to a town near you. Minutemen often give such spots facetious rest-stop-style nicknames, like “The G.W. Bush OTM Memorial Pick-Up.” The places where the migrants congregate look like the contents of a Wal-Mart superstore, emptied ankle-deep. We find everything from school supplies to medications to baby clothes to soiled boxer-briefs to Don Pedro brandy (with limes) to baggies of garlic, which illegals mistakenly think will ward off poisonous snakes.
I ask Simcox the obvious: If women carrying babies can make it in without much trouble, assuming they don’t get lost or dehydrated, how difficult would it be for a well-funded, well-armed terrorist with GPS navigation to skirt over the border? He looks at me like I’m a dim child. “Are you kidding?” he says. “Piece of cake!” About the biggest danger they’d face, from the looks of the trails, is tripping over one of the Jansport backpacks ditched by the thousands of Mexicans who’ve gone before them.
I highlight this story because I suspect that many of us who wish the Federal government would take the illegal immigration problem more seriously (and it appears Homeland Security is finally getting the message) are neverthless uncomfortable with stories we hear about the Minutemen project—if you read nothing but legacy media accounts and certain blogs, for example, you’d think the Minuteman ranks were rife with White Supremacists and armed mercenaries bent on bagging a family of wetbacks with sniper rifles—even as we support their efforts in spirit.
Labash’s piece puts a different face on the Minuteman, re-focusing attention onto their words as they witness conditions on the border—which, when described intimately (instead of with a rush of statistics and dollar figures), makes the problem seem even more desperate—and away from the charges of “racism” that critics have used to diminish their efforts and poison their credibility.
Decide for yourselves, however. For my part, these folks don’t, for the most part, strike me as the army of mini-Buchanans they’re often made out to be—but rather as the kind of activists progressives would likely celebrate were they gathering to support the “rights” of illegals to obtain drivers licenses and health care benefits.
Does the USA have a policy for raped millionaire women who bash the USA to immigrate, like Canada does?
Or they just get citizenship once they step to this side of the border and get automatic citizenship for the kids?
This is the one issue I part ways with the Bush administration. I firmly believe the republicans are terrified of being the party that enforces borders, specifically because they see hispanics as a signigificant voting block and cutting back on illegal immigration will cost them votes in the long run.
I think Bush and Co. have that wrong. I have a secretary from Ecuador and our receptionist is from Cuba, both legally immigrated here, both are now citizens and both are up in arms about the immigration problem. I understand it – they went through the process, they did their time, but people entering the country illegally receive many of the same benefits and yet pay no taxes.
I think what you’ll ultimately see is whoever ends up doing serious immigration reform will alienate the mexican voting block but will solidify support from hispanics who are not crossing the borders illegally en masse.
It’s not just the MSM. Democratic officials are getting into the act as well.
During last week’s Mexican Independence Day celebration at the Texas State Capitol, Congressman Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex) said that (paraphrasing), “These minutemen are nothing new to Texas. They’ve been here a long time. Only they used to wear white sheets.”
The Republicans could overcome the potential hispanic hit by showing that those who are illegal are often victimized by society and have no recourse, and then increase the allowable number of immigrants from countries south of the border by a huge amount.
We want all the folks who will work hard to make something of themselves anyway.
Some simple rule changes would help a lot. Complete rejection of the “Matricula Consular” as valid ID as a first step, and if local law enforcement in the border area were not being discouraged from asking for green cards, for example.
If I’m a gringo vacationing in Chihuahua and the mex police stop me, you bet your ass they’re gonna want to see some valid ID, and not my “Ralph’s Super Saver” card…
I think Mojo has it right. If realignment of our immigration laws were to happen, you would still have, as in the case of Riverside California, a large number of leftists screaming racism while trying to increase their constituancy. The “plight of the poor immigrant” is a continous rally cry here in CA by the Latino community. But the real truth of the illegal work force is that a large percentage of the money earned is sent back to Mexico and that is the main reason why the Mexican government turns the the other way when it is face with the thought of controlling the flow of their own citizens into the US…
I have relatives from the Caribbean. Now, as American citizens, they are furious that illegal aliens not only make them look bad, but get to stay without following our laws. This issue alone (oh, and my gentle persuasion)has made them rock solid conservatives and they wonder where the Republican party is on this issue.
Hmmm.
Frankly I don’t think the Republican party really gives a rat’s ass what conservatives want.
Seriously. What issues do conservatives really want that the Republican party has come through on?
And in case you’re going to point out federally funded embryonic stem cell research, Clinton didn’t fund any of it with federal money. Bush is actually the first President to fund that sort of research.
Oh well. I figure if conservatives vote for Republicans in 2006 or 2008, then they have absolutely no room to bitch when the GOP bends their collective ass over a table.
spamword: “large”. rather appropriate.
But, but my ass hasn’t a collective. Will I have to vote for Hillary to get my conservative crumbs?
Please use any other argument you would like against illegal immigration, Matt, but please do not tell me that illegals pay no taxes. They do. Yes, there are any number of businesses and farms that pay illegals cash to keep them off the books. I’m not denying that, but any illegal who has been here for longer than a year has paid a broker for a fake social security card, with which they’ve gone and received a driver’s license. These are the two forms of identification they need to get a job where they receive an actual paycheck, and in some instances, benefits. These people will have money withheld from their paycheck to pay for federal, state and in some cases municipal income taxes. They will also have social security withholding. Are these people ever going to file for a refund? Or file for social security disability if they get hurt on the job? No, because that will bring scrutiny. Hence the government gets to keep that money.
Illegals also pay sales tax on any purchases they might make. They also pay gas tax. And when they rent an apartment part of that money will make it back to the government in the form of property taxes.
I have met and worked with my fair share of illegals who were lazy and for whom the phrase “no habla” meant “I know exactly what the fuck you’re saying, bitch, but I don’t care.” But the majority of illegals I’ve known want nothing more that to feed their families. They’re not here to suck up social services. They’re not here to run amok. They’re here to work so that their families can eat. They keep their heads down and they don’t cause trouble. Speaking for myself, I want more of these people to come to this country. Like everyone else I can live without the drug dealers and the like, but honest people who just want to eat, yeah, I want more of those. Honestly, they’re the ones who deserve a better immigration policy en totale because the one we’ve got right now, no matter how many guards you put at the border to enforce it, just doesn’t work.
The construction industry in the Atlanta area, which is booming big time, would not exist if not for the amigoes(Fuck you Harry Reid). I don’t know how many are illegal, but they all have at least fake green cards and taxes are withheld, along with all the sales and imbedded taxes and peripheral industry they support. Almost all of them I know are honest, hard working family folks and I am proud to call a few of them friends. I honestly don’t know of anyone who really wants a job that can’t get one because of all the illegals, we need help bad and can’t find people. A decent grasp of English is required, and that is near impossible to find regardless of nationality it seems.
I also find it hard to understand why well funded terrorists would try to sneak across the Mexican border, when with fake ID’s it is not that hard to fly straight here, or at least come over from the even less protected Canadian border. I think we need to fix our immigration laws so it is easier for honest Mexicans to get in, then crack down on the illegals. I just have a real hard time condemning folks trying to provide a better life for their family, when we have so many ungrateful bastards here too lazy to do anything buy vote Democratic.
Kind of hard to sneak weapons or bomb materials in on an airplane, or from Canada.
With the corruption that’s happening in border towns—and getting more and more blatant—Mexico would be a pretty inviting route.
In addition to national security, is there a personal angle to this as well?
IE, are people who live along the border being deprived of the right to be secure on their own property?
My recollection is that the actual property owners have to endure a lot of abuse simply because the government will not enforce its own laws on immigration. Unregulated trespassing, theft, litter, and worry about just who these people are and what they might do are not consistent with private property and the rights that go with it.
Hmmmm.
“Please use any other argument you would like against illegal immigration, Matt, but please do not tell me that illegals pay no taxes.”
Really? Then just how much in federal taxes does a person with an income of less tan $14,000/yr pay?
Sales tax? Property tax?
It costs $14,000/yr to educate one child of an illegal alien here in New Jersey. And you’re talking about taxes?