Immigration Debate spurring resurgence of Hate Groups

Filed under the "Not Terribly Surprising" Column by Time Magazine.

With immigration perhaps America's most volatile issue, a troubling backlash has erupted among its most fervent foes. There are, of course, the Minutemen, the self-appointed border vigilantes who operate in several states. And now groups of militiamen, white supremacists and neo-Nazis are using resentment over the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. as a potent rallying cry. "The immigration furor has been critical to the growth we've seen" in hate groups, says Mark Potok, head of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center. The center counts some 800 racist groups operating in the U.S. today, a 5% spurt in the past year and a 33% jump from 2000. "They think they've found an issue with racial overtones and a real resonance with the American public," says Potok, "and they are exploiting it as effectively as they can"

We've already had CNN's Lou Dobbs using graphics from a Hate Group in order to argue that Mexican's want to reestablish "Aztlan". Tony Snow and "Hugging the Tar Baby". Bill O'Reilly lamenting the "Browning of America" and John "Make More Babies" Gibson. Now, with the House Republicans jumping up and down and stamping their feet over immigration, and the President and Senate presenting the "sensible comprehensive" approach, this is a battle that could very well rip the Republican party asunder.

So I'm warming up the popcorn, you?

Check out this weekend's battle between Congressman James Sensenbrenner and Senator Chuck Hagel on Meet The Press.

REP. JAMES SENSENBRENNER (R-WI): Well, it's too much too soon and too expensive. What we have to do is first secure the border, and then we have to turn off the magnet that brings more illegal immigrants into our country. Once we do that and we know it's effective, then we can figure out what to do with the 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants that are already here. I'm afraid that the amnesty--and that's what it is--that's proposed in the Senate bill and the way it's proposed is going to result in huge document fraud just like there was when amnesty was passed 20 years ago in the Simpson-Mazzoli Bill, which failed so miserably that we have a problem that's out of control now.

MR. RUSSERT: What would you do with the 11 million illegal immigrants?

REP. SENSENBRENNER: Well, if we have a workable and effective employer sanctions program, then I think a lot of the illegal immigrants would simply go back home because they would no longer be able to work in this country illegally.

He thinks they would simply "go back home"? And leave family, including their children behind?

MR. RUSSERT: As you well know, those 11 million illegal immigrants have about three million children who were born in the U.S., therefore they are U.S. citizens. What would happen to them? Would they go back to the or--the country of origin for the mom and pop? Or would they stay in the U.S.?

REP. SENSENBRENNER: The mom and pop would have to make that determination on their own. We cannot deport U.S. citizens, and I would tell you that it's impractical and probably physically impossible to deport the 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants that are already here. What the Senate does is throw up their hands, say, "Give them amnesty"--they don't call it amnesty--but give them amnesty and allow them to stay. That's not fair because it gives a reward to a lawbreaker, but it also is unfair to people who are standing in queue to become legal immigrants.

Oh, you might not be able to deport them all, but then you could simply hold them indefinately in some of those shiny new Halliburton/KBR detention centers.

In the end, Sensenbrenner has made his crystal position clear. "Amnesty is wrong". Right, except that you also might give them a "path to citizenship" or make them "legal" in some manner as he later mentions during the interview.

MR. RUSSERT: Twenty-four percent of the farming industry relies on illegal immigrants; 17 percent of the cleaning industry, 14 percent of the construction industry, 12 percent of the food preparation industry--all illegal immigrants. What happens to those industries if the illegal immigrants are sent home?

REP. SENSENBRENNER: I'm not saying that the illegal immigrants will be sent home, and I think that the end sum game, which I hope Senator Hagel agrees with, is to turn the illegal immigrant work force into a legal work force, whether they're legal immigrants or whether they're United States citizens. Because this problem has festered for such a long period of time, that can't be done with the wave of a wand or the signing of a bill by the president of the United States.

A comment to which Senator Hagel Responded ...

SEN. HAGEL: Jim Sensenbrenner has just described the Senate bill. He has just described why we should pass the Senate bill. Everything he just said, it is right and it is included in the Senate bill. You talk about polls and the American people and where the American people are on this. Isn't it interesting that you have four states that are along that 2,000-mile border with Mexico, four states with eight United States senators. Five of those eight senators, bipartisan, supported the Senate bill.

But you see, what Hagel doesn't understand is that very idea of Amnesty, even if it's restricted to migrants who been in the U.S. for more than fives years already, have no criminal record and are willing to pay a significant fine, back taxes and learn english -- simply isn't good enough for Sensenbrenner's true constitutents.

The Hate Groups.

Both Potok's group and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) are worried that extremists are burrowing their way into the anti-immigration mainstream. Mark Martin, 43, of Covington, Ohio, is a chef at a French restaurant and tends his backyard organic garden. But he also dons the black and brown uniform of western Ohio's National Socialist (read: Nazi) Movement. "There's nothing neo about us," he says. Martin admits he frequently harasses day laborers and threatens them with deportation. "As Americans, we have the right to make a citizen's arrest and detain them," he insists. "And if they try to get away, we have the right to get physical with them." Martin gleefully boasts about leading eight fellow storm troopers in disrupting a May 1 pro-immigrant rally in Dayton by taunting protesters. Although police ultimately restrained him, Martin believes his agitation was worthwhile because it attracted new recruits. "After the rally, the Klan called us," he says. "Now we've started working together more often."

But wait, it gets worse....

In addition to white supremacists, the immigration debate seems to have reinvigorated members of the antigovernment militias of the 1990s. Those groups largely disbanded after the Oklahoma City bombing orchestrated by militia groupie Timothy McVeigh and, later, the failure of a Y2K bug to trigger the mass chaos some militia members expected. "We've seen people from Missouri and Kentucky militias involved in border-vigilante activity, especially with the gung-ho Arizona group Ranch Rescue that used face paint, military uniforms and weapons," says Mark Pitcavage, fact-finding director of the ADL. "It's a natural shift. Militias fell on hard times, and this anti-immigration movement is new and fresh."

So, we've reawakened the "Turner Diaries" crowd once again. The Footsoldiers and Shock-Troops of the American Taliban, like Eric "The Olympic Bomber" Rudolph. That's just excellent. I've been wondering where they've been in the midst of all these government wiretap and overreach issues. Ever since the Ruby Ridge incident, the idea of paramilitary government agents trampling on the Fourth Amendment Rights of the citizenry has been the source of night sweats for these guys. (And just wait until they remember that Sensenbrenner wrote the Patriot Act!)

Having these guys as the poster boys for the building of a wall and militarizing the border should really bring the President and the Senate around to Sensenbrenner's way of thinking... Not.

The increasing influx of supramacists show exactly why the House/Sensenbrenner position is so illogical. He wants illegals to become legal, but he doesn't want to deport them (can't) and he doesn't want them seperated from their family, to be granted "amnesty", or even allowed to pay restitution for their crime as the Senate bill requires?

So just what the fuck does he plan to do with them exactly?

Nothing, it seems. This is just a show, it's vaudeville, it's red meat for the red staters to get their blood boiling so they don't stay home in November and let the Republicans get smashed for all the incompetent and self-indulgent bullcrap they've been trying to pull for five years.

Personally, I think it's too little and far too late for that.

Ah, the popcorn's ready -- this should be a great show.

Vyan