No Foreigners Allowed (Unless Your Roof Leaks)

Dub was in Arizona on a Tucson Air Force Base yesterday. He doesn't dare speak in a civilian setting because the streets of Paris suburbs during the recent rioting would look like Mayberry in comparison to the streets outside Dub's speaking venue. In his comically earnest high-school-sophomore debater's speaking pattern, Dub proclaimed us both a nation of immigrants and a nation of soft-hearted folk with sympathies for the immigrant underdogs who swarm our southern boundaries. Dub is out of step with a substantial portion of his base: the Minutemen and a large portion of white Republicans. These quasi-militiamen and closet supremacists are rabidly xenophobic. Dub's "guest worker" proposal is anathema to the militiamen and their KKK-ilk. Of course, Dub wants braceros or "guest workers" who are registered with the INS or whatever the hell the Department of Homeland Security calls the Border Patrol these days. Homeland Security is another boondoggle for hacks and quacks. See how Homeland Security handled the natural disaster crises on the Gulf Coast. See how Homeland Security has made us safer by forcing us to take off our shoes in airports. In a way, the wacko militiamen are just as effective as Homeland Security employees. Dub is proposing a schizophrenic policy on immigration: keep 'em out and let 'em in — all at the same time. If this is (fair & balanced) lunacy, so be it.

[x TNR Online]
Outside In: The Minutemen Are More Mainstream Than You Think
by Eve Fairbanks

What "anti-immigration cranks such as the Minutemen ... are really up to," The Washington Post judged in an editorial this month, "is simple harassment." But on a recent Friday morning the Herndon Minutemen--a new Northern Virginia chapter of the notorious Arizona-based Minuteman Civil Defense Corps--are mostly just being harassed themselves. "Minutemen, go home!" commuters yell from cars careering down Alabama Drive, the no-man's land between the Herndon 7-11 where the day-laborers gather and the strip of sidewalk where the Minutemen keep watch. At one point, a white SUV pulls up to the curb where that morning's group of six Minutemen, five men and one woman, are standing with camcorders, binoculars, and walkie-talkies. "You are racist," its driver tells the bundled, defiant band. "You don't represent the people of Herndon. Go home."

The problem is, these Minutemen are home. Two weeks ago, I joined the Herndon Minutemen on one of their missions to photograph and videotape employers hiring day-laborers from the Herndon 7-11 expecting to be highly entertained by a gaggle of nutty retirees who'd piled into their Buicks before dawn for the chance to shake a shotgun at any varmint Mexicans they could find. After all, this is the image of the Minutemen held by many Americans, from commuters hurling insults to members of the media. A recent Post headline explained that "ON PATROL IN VT., MINUTEMEN ARE THE OUTSIDERS," while The Nation described a Minuteman rally as a "fringe political event." In short, the Minutemen are widely regarded both as outside agitators to the areas they patrol and as politically marginalized extremists.

But most of the Herndon Minutemen I met live just minutes away from the 7-11 they watch, next door or down the street from the day-laborers who cluster opposite them across Alabama Drive. And, while their actions are obnoxious, their concerns, far from being fringe, echo decidedly mainstream anxieties about cultural questions raised by uncontrolled illegal immigration. A recent Rasmussen Reports poll found that a full 54 percent of Americans actually have a "favorable impression" of the Minutemen, while only 22 percent have an "unfavorable" view. For liberals to dismiss the Minutemen as a tiny minority of racist throwbacks, loathed by the communities in which they operate, isn't just inaccurate. It's also naïve--and politically dangerous.

One reason the Minutemen have acquired a crankish reputation is their obsession with legal technicalities. The Herndon group does not harass the day laborers themselves; rather it seeks to nab their employers for minor violations of the law and, further, insists that it is these kinds of violations that really bother them. George Taplin, the organization's founder, tells me that he plans to file reports on employers for operating a business without a license, operating without a valid contractor's license, non-payment of business taxes, and improper registration of a motor vehicle. This concern for the proper application of law pervades group members' behavior while on patrol. They never step back onto the grass behind their strip of sidewalk because it is technically illegal to snap photographs of unwilling subjects while standing on private property. "Bottom line is, we have laws in our society," Bill, a short, affable Minuteman who declined to give his last name, tells me. "Are we going to selectively choose which we follow?" This sanctimonious concern about the corollary legal issues raised by illegal immigration is part of what makes the Minutemen seem, well, a little weird.

But over the course of the morning, as the Minutemen speak about why they joined the group, and why they soldier on the in face of such abuse, it becomes clear that such legalistic concerns are often a veil for deeper dissatisfaction with the way an expanding immigrant population is affecting the social fabric of their communities. This discomfort manifests itself as concern both about crime and about broader changes in the local culture--i.e., how the local immigrant community lives and socializes. Bill explains that he "slid into the Minutemen" because he was disturbed by the way his neighborhood was changing, and the other Minutemen standing with him nod in agreement. "Dormitory-style homes" have popped up on their streets, Bill says, and the residents come and go at strange hours. Their neighbors' children are intimidated and no longer like to play outside, in part because "we've got about 17 cars coming and going from our neighbors' houses." Matt, another Minuteman who lives in nearby Manassas, claims that the police have busted prostitution rings operating out of nearby properties. Bill doesn't want his name printed, he tells me, because he worries about retaliation from the local Hispanic gang, MS-13. Pointing to the cluster of day-laborers across the street, he explains to me that the Herndon 7-11 is "a social gathering place, too." Taplin has publicly objected to a regulated day-laborer site set to open in Herndon on December 19--proposed in order to combat the trespassing, litter, and nuisance complaints that have arisen in conjunction with the informal 7-11 site--because he worries that even a regulated locale wouldn't change "their behaviors." Even on the coldest mornings, more than 50 workers often convene at the 7-11, and Bill judges that sometimes only 10 or 20 get hired. "When," he asks me, "is it ever a good thing for 40 men to hang out together?"

These anxieties may be overblown, in some cases borderline racist; but they are not, unfortunately, outside the mainstream. In Mount Pleasant, the predominantly Hispanic, rapidly gentrifying Washington neighborhood where I live, complaints have begun to surface about the groups of men that congregate on stoops or outside of convenience stores at night. Those who have complained call it loitering, but one Hispanic resident told the Post that when the men gather outdoors, "[t]hey're having coffee; they talk about issues. ... It's part of our community." For the neighborhood's Hispanic population, this practice is a cultural tradition; for its newer batch of hip, ostensibly liberal urbanites, it is disturbing, and too closely resembles something American law designates a crime.

These are people who would never admit they share anything in common with the Herndon Minutemen. But like it or not, the Minutemen are acting on anxieties many Americans share--anxieties about the challenge of enforcing the law in towns that are swelling in size due to immigration; anxieties about the challenge of integrating and accommodating an immigrant culture. Border states like California have been grappling with these issues for years, in court battles about day-laborer sites and debates over concepts like bilingual education. Often in these conflicts those who have presented cultural, as opposed to legal, objections to uncontrolled immigration are condemned as xenophobic or racist. But as my Mount Pleasant neighbors have shown, it can be tricky to disentangle legal from cultural discomfort. Bill O'Reilly, who consistently reaches the largest number of viewers of any cable television pundit, lectured his viewers (and guest Geraldo Rivera) on the evil consequences of immigration last month: "You know, there's the slumlords are stacking 60 men in one house out on Long Island, and then the whole neighborhood is devastated. When you have no supervision of sexual predators who come from other countries, as you don't, all of those unintended consequences frighten people." And it's not just O'Reilly. In a Democracy Corps poll this month, 49 percent of respondents said they have a generally "cold and unfavorable" feeling towards immigration, while just 23 percent said they have a "warm and favorable" feeling. Keep in mind that this poll was measuring Americans' views on immigration as a general concept, not on illegal immigration specifically.

Our national debate on immigration tends to focus on economic issues, namely job loss, and scrupulously to avoid the kind of cultural anxieties that the Herndon Minutemen, the residents of Mount Pleasant, and Bill O'Reilly are bringing to the fore. After all, anxieties about how immigration will affect national culture seem like more of a European thing, springing from a deep-seated and distinctly un-American nativism and yielding byproducts like the headscarf dispute and Jean-Marie Le Pen. But on this side of the Atlantic, little Le Pens are beginning to flourish. Jim Gilchrist, who founded the Minuteman Project, has forced a California House of Representatives contest into a December 6 runoff by standing for office as an independent on a platform almost exclusively dedicated to combating immigration. He will not win, but he received an impressive 15 percent of the initial vote, nearly twice as much as the leading Democrat. Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo, who broke party ranks and stumped for Gilchrist in California this month, is writing a book about immigration, tentatively titled In Mortal Danger, which he suggested to The New York Sun could serve as his campaign platform for a possible presidential run in 2008. Many pundits and election scholars have judged that immigration will be a key issue in the elections in 2006.

Surely, even if an immigration-dominated election were to take place, most Americans would not support a Tancredo. Immigration is a proud feature of our cultural fabric in a way it has never been in Europe, and the United States has a long history of successfully absorbing immigrants. In August, despite heavy opposition, the Herndon town council voted 5-2 to approve the construction of an official day-laborer site to replace the 7-11. Slated to open on December 19, the site will be run by a non-profit and will provide access to water, bathrooms, and, for laborers who are not hired for the day, English classes and job training. Defeated, those who agitated against the site had to resort to becoming Minutemen--reduced from taking part in a serious debate to bragging about an exploit in which they chased a pickup-driving contractor in circles around a parking lot "like in a Three Stooges movie."

In a certain way, it is nice to see these people making themselves a little ridiculous. But to write them off as ridiculous, as the Post, The Nation, and plenty of others have done, is to make a serious political miscalculation. Only a few years ago, the European political establishment largely ignored concerns about an immigration wave overwhelmingly originating from one region--only to be stunned as fanatics rose to prominence by championing an issue that mainstream politicians had refused to touch. To prevent the same thing from happening here, liberals will have to recognize that immigration, often considered a "conservative" topic, is now a potent political issue. Concern is no longer confined to California, Arizona, and Texas; nor is it confined to Republicans. Liberals will need to make an affirmative case for immigration as a concept--but also concede that our current system is deeply flawed. They will have to acknowledge that many Americans have legitimate worries about immigration--but that there are better ways to approach the issue than skulking around day laborer sites with a camera. Wherever they come down on the issue, and whatever they propose, liberals will have to acknowledge that immigration is not a fringe concern. And telling the Minutemen to "go home" isn't going to make it go away.

Eve Fairbanks is a reporter-researcher at TNR.

Copyright © 2005, The New Republic

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