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Minutemen and racist paranoia
Focus, Saturday, February 11, 2006, p. a17
DALLAS HANSEN
If you believe the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, America is being
invaded, its sovereignty and way of life threatened, by Mexican
"Reconquistas" bent on reclaiming the U.S. Southwest. Other groups see
something worse. According to usborderpatrol.com, a website "maintained
by supporters of the United States Border Patrol," not one American is
safe.
"Those illegals -- those 'Undocumented Migrants' crossing our southern
border -- will soon be driving extra large Ford F-250 pickup trucks
fully loaded with 1,000 pounds of anthrax and/or smallpox, and carrying
some really nice and shiny dispensers to spray the stuff for at least
20 miles downwind and... toward you and your family." (emphasis in
original)
If, however, the invading vehicle is a Cadillac Escalade, the cargo is
likelier to be 1,400 pounds of loco weed, as was a marijuana-stuffed
SUV abandoned by smugglers in Texas on Jan. 23. That vehicle's
incursion was reportedly assisted by a Mexican military humvee
featuring a mounted .50 calibre machine-gun that left observing
Hudspeth Country sheriff's deputies and the Texas Highway Patrol
understandably reluctant to intervene.
Thankfully, the U.S. House of Representatives is paying attention. "We
are facing a military on the other side of the border who periodically
comes to this side of the border," said Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) during
a recent anti-illegal immigration rally. "I am asking the president,
commit the military to this border. We have a war."
The House, having recently passed a bill calling for the erection of a
five-metre high, 1,100-kilometre long steel wall along the border,
would prefer that illegal residence in the U.S. be considered a felony.
Now if only these patriotic laws could make it past a dangerously soft
Senate.
Up on the northern border, the flow of illegal migrants isn't so much a
flood as a trickle. Whereas the Minutemen in California, Texas and
Arizona have been keeping busy watching for border-jumpers amid the
desert hinterlands, their counterparts in Washington state, Montana,
North Dakota, Michigan, New York and Vermont admit they haven't seen
anything. In Whatcom County, Wash., directly over the line from the
Vancouver suburb of Surrey, a battery of night-vision CCTV cameras and
a U.S. border patrol unit would seem sufficient, but the Minutemen
themselves are quick to admit that their presence is mostly a
propaganda ploy. They want to see the border patrol, whose numbers and
funding have tripled since 1995, tripled again. Ironically -- or,
rather, hypocritically -- many of the Minutemen call themselves
Libertarians.
It has always struck me as absurd that men can draw lines in the land
and imprison or kill people for crossing them. Globalization may have
facilitated the international movement of goods, ideas and capital, but
not of labour. It would make rather more sense to let the markets
determine where people work, and at what wages -- and this is precisely
what's happening in the U.S., despite populist pressure to "contain"
illegal immigration. President George W. Bush knows the American
economy needs unskilled as well as skilled labour, which is why he has
earned the enmity of groups like the Minutemen for his advocacy of a
"guest worker" program, which amounts to a limited amnesty for
undocumented workers.
Many industries, such as agriculture and construction, depend on large
amounts of cheap, unskilled labour. These are positions that, these
days, white Americans are loath to fill -- whatever the wage.
The Minutemen can claim a number of high-profile supporters in politics
and media -- including CNN's Lou Dobbs -- but one of their most irksome
ideologues wraps his xenophobia in a blanket of green.
"I care about the advancement of society -- toward a viable, long-term
sustainable quality of life for both plants and animals," writes Frosty
Wooldridge -- who, as his name would suggest, is white.
Wooldridge runs a website filled with his anti-immigration "articles"
warning of the dangers of overpopulation. He offers a vision of what
Mexican migrants will find as they drift toward a border protected by
the Minutemen:
"They are going to meet with a miles-long line of organized,
military-style, determined, gritty and pissed off American patriots in
tents, motorhomes, pickup trucks by campfires and from every walk of
life holding binoculars -- and taking a stand for America."
Never mind that the U.S. was founded on immigration and continues to
prosper from it. Ben Johnson, one of Wooldridge's compatriots at Front
Page Magazine, remains nostalgic for 1950s America:
"Thanks to low immigration, the swamp of cheap labor was largely
drained during this period, America became a fundamentally middle-class
society, and our many European ethnic groups were brought together into
a common national culture."
Johnson, at least, doesn't even try to hide his racism.
Category: Editorial and Opinions
Uniform subject(s): Immigrants, emigrants and refugees
Length: Medium, 621 words
© 2006 Winnipeg Free Press. All rights reserved.
www.dallashansen.com |
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