Posted on 07/16/2005 3:54:43 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
CAMPO, Calif. (AP) - Volunteers patrolled remote mountains outside San Diego for human traffickers and drug smugglers Saturday, launching a campaign modeled after an effort in the Arizona desert to draw attention to the nation's porous border with Mexico.
Jim Chase, a former Arizona Minuteman volunteer who cut ties with that group's leadership, is leading California Border Watch, which mobilized Saturday to patrol a 26-mile rural stretch of rolling hills from Jacumba to Tecate through Aug. 7.
Chase, a retired postal worker from Oceanside, said he and others will carry guns for self-defense but will not initiate attacks.
"The guns are for one reason - to keep my people alive," he said in an interview Friday.
About 30 volunteers came out Saturday to join the patrol, Chase said. A loud group of protesters, however, outnumbered the volunteers and Chase temporarily drove away from the border in the afternoon to chants of "racists go home."
Earlier this week, the Web site for Chase's group urged volunteers to bring baseball bats, mace, pepper spray and machetes. Chase said he removed those items after the U.S. Border Patrol expressed concern.
The group has set up headquarters outside the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Campo, an unincorporated mountain village of about 1,200 people located about a mile north of the Mexican border and 40 miles east of San Diego.
A group of about 100 migrant activists staged a rally Saturday against the volunteer patrol, said Stan Isham, a supervisory border patrol agent. The rally was civil and no problems were reported, Isham said.
Rich Macgurn, a human rights activist with Gente Unida (People United), said the number of patrol volunteers was "pretty scarce" and that protesters had only spotted a few of them.
The Border Patrol was setting up a command post outside its Campo station, and San Diego Sheriff Bill Kolender said deputies would closely monitor the area.
"We will not tolerate any kind of hate crimes, we will not tolerate any violations of the law, and we will see to it that the Border Patrol is able to do their job in a safe manner," Kolender said.
Chase said he expected 100 and 200 volunteers would join the patrol throughout the three-week vigil.
Volunteers will call the Border Patrol if they spot illegal border crossers, Chase said. He won't chase illegal immigrants but said others might.
"If somebody's stupid enough to do it, I'm not going to stop them," he said.
Chase, who turned 58 Saturday, has been feuding with other activists organizing civilian patrols in an effort to turn public attention to illegal immigration. The campaigns are modeled after patrols in Arizona that garnered international attention and criticism on both sides of the border in April.
Chase has traded harsh words with Andy Ramirez, whose Chino-based Friends of the Border Patrol plans a civilian patrol in San Diego County in September. He also cut ties with Minuteman co-founder Chris Simcox of Arizona, who hopes to organize a patrol along the southern U.S. border in October.
If the government won't do it, armed citizens will.
God bless and keep safe our Minutemen and MinuteLadies. They are America's 21st century real heros.
aka, the Enemy Within.
They are intent on a cultural jihad.
Disseminate. Be ready. Be prepared. Times are short.
Thanks for speaking up for Californians! What you say is absolutely true.
What does this have to do with trying to stop illegal aliens from crossing our border?
Exactly. Around here, they are known as the quislings.
"After Buchanan got less than half of one percent of the vote they still were in denial and apparently still are today."
Typical strawman argument. First, by definition the Buchananites are a trivial fraction of the Republican base and therefore have zero effect on where the Repubs are headed. Next, you've again tried to claim opposition to illegals is a political loser, when in fact prop 202 in Arizona and other indications are that it is a winning issue.
Why don't you try and confuse the issue further by mentioning the Star Trek contingent, that ought to go over just as well.
Except, of course, illegal entry into the U.S., smuggling of humans, document forgery, illegal employment, ...
You and your anti-law enforcement pals are having quite as day on the illegal threads.
On your about page you state: "First among that group is the Buchanan gang that has been exploiting racism for almost twenty years, originally in an attempt by Buchanan to advance his own political career, then as spoiler to extract revenge on Republicans for rejecting him in favor of "that Bush boy", and finally as a profit making venture." You give Buchanan much to much credit, or blame. Buchanan is insignificant.
My Representative to Congress is a Republican. He owns a farm like numerous others in Congress and state governments, Democrats and Republicans alike, that are farmers and ranchers. This will likely come as a major surprise to you, but they profit directly from illegal immigrant labor. It increases their personal wealth. To accomplish the deed they contract with a "labor contractor" to supply the labor. When improprieties are uncovered they simply let the blame fall on the shoulders of the "labor contractor".
Have you noticed it is Congress, not Pat Buchanan that creates our immigration laws. All efforts to address the problems surrounding illegal immigration have stalled in CONGRESS for years, not Pat Buchanan's desk. Congressmen (and state legislators) like mine, throughout the nation have a great stake in keeping the issue of illegal immigration from resolution. Anything Pat Buchanan is making from his anti-illegal immigrant stance is insignificant when compared to what our elected representatives and their financial backers are making. The problem is neither Democrat or Republican. There are too many from both parties working in unison to keep Congress stalled.
Then there's these two statements:
"Minor players include Municipal Leagues, Hospital associations, social service providers' organizations and government employees' groups whose lobbyists are the ones commissioning the "scientific" studies showing that illegals have an adverse financial impact necessitating increased government funding for their institutions/communities/organizations etc...
But the facts are that our economy is dependent on immigrant labor; not enough are being admitted legally to replace the forty million American workers who have been aborted since Roe V. Wade."
Well now, one of those "minor players" is the GAO that has prepared reports for Congress that show illegal immigrants are taking jobs from American citizens. Yes, abortion has taken millions of lives, but if everyone one of those children were here today, there would there would be more, not fewer American citizens adversely affected by the purposeful stalling of immigration reform in Congress.
You are right about bayourod ALWAYS trying to turn the subject away from illegal immigration.
Why then for the first time in recent history are both Democrats and Republicans viewed negatively by voters across the nation? Both are polling a 60% negative among voters.
"Are you starting that same old third party absurdity that we had to suffer through four years ago?"
Something more powerful than a third party is showing signs of life. It is unorganized, and has both Democrats and Republicans looking over their shoulders. In states that allow it, voters are changing from registering with a party and selecting "No Party" or "Decline to State" as their designation. Both major parties are losing registrations to this such independent classifications. It perplexes both major parties because they spend millions in party and government funds trying to gain new registrations, yet they are losing ground to an unorganized, unfunded phenomenon. The two parties are trying hard to stop the phenomenon with a combined effort.
It's a quiet stirring of citizens that have realized the betrayals of both major parties. The citizens are leaving the parties that abandoned them. You are still in the majority bayourod. You have given yourself to a one of the two major political parties. Maybe the day will come when the majority of our citizens will shrug of the vested interests of the two parties for something that represents the concerns of most citizens.
I got that sense too. I hope he, and the others in his group don't do anything that might win sympathy for the illegal immigrants. If the group tries to enforce the law they will be identified as vigilante. If they choose to observe and notify proper authorities they are the equivalent of a "Neighborhood Watch" program for the nation. If they do anything stupid that wins sympathy for the illegal immigrants I'll start wondering if this retired postal worker was a government plant.
I used to live in a one party state--Democrat. I got active in the Republican Party and eventually represented the Republican party in a 20 county district larger than many states.
In a number of those counties a Republican primary had never been held nor had there ever been a Republican County Chairman or organization nor had there been anything keeping the Democrats from reporting what ever election results they felt like in Presidential, Governor, Senate, and Congressional races.
My goal was to get one person in each county to hold a Republican Primary in their home just so the people in that county would know that there really was a Republican party and to give them the opportunity to vote in such primaries as Reagan v Ford, Reagan v Bush, Bush v Kemp etc...
My life was threatened a couple times by local Democrat thugs who didn't want a Republican presence in their county. People I recruited to be county chairmen didn't usually last long. Their businesses suffered, they were threatened with being fired from their jobs, their children harassed at school, ostracized at church, etc...
So I know what it's like to fight an uphill battle
That said, third parties have no hope to be anything except spoilers in very tight races. Actually join the Republican Party and work from the inside to make changes.
After more than thirty years as a registered Republican, and having worked in the campaigns of Nixon, Ford, Reagan (Governor and President) and countless others, I've seen the Republican Party become the Democratic Party of the late sixties. They spend the country into debt. They are overly enthusiastic to compromise anything for a vote. Their promises have no substance to support them. Increasingly, voters are coming to realize the Republican Party is the other side of the same coin the Democratic Party is on. I watched the southern states switch from Democrat to Republican in the sixties, seventies, and eighties. They may have switched party affiliation, but they didn't change their government spending habits.
With both major parties suffering a disapproval rating of 60% among registered voters, there is an unorganized populist uprising take root. Behind it all are many issues, but one rings a resounding toll among Democrats and Republicans alike. Nearly 85% of registered voters are very displeased with the current policies surrounding illegal immigration. There's a groundswell rising up, and neither major political party can dodge it much longer.
That's just Reform Party mantra. You guys are nothing but spoilers. You will never be in a position to make policy and you only deceive yourself if you think you can blackmail either Republican or Democrat candidates into taking positions that will cost them votes.
Serious candidates, as opposed to vanity candidates, have professional pollsters they listen to. The propaganda of professional fundraisers may find reception among the people from whom they are soliciting money, but fall on deaf ears of serious candidates.
No blackmail is necessary when both parties will willingly compromise their very souls for money, votes and control of the people.
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