Let me sum up the state of the immigration debate over the past two decades:

1986–I think we should protect our borders and enforce immigration laws.

Response: Racist!

1996–I think we should do a better job of protecting our borders and enforcing immigration laws.

Response: Racist!

9/12/2001–I think we should really, finally get serious about protecting our
borders and enforcing immigration laws.

Response: Good idea! Never forget! Whatever it takes!

Spring 2005–Hey, um, what happened to protecting our borders and enforcing immigration laws?

Response: Racist!

Every time I think we’re making progress in the immigration debate, out comes the lazy, overplayed, and so-9/10 race card. This time it’s being dealt by the usually rational Professor Steve Bainbridge, who tars the Minuteman Project and its pro-immigration enforcement supporters as “nuts” guilty of “nativism” and racism.” (Big tip of the hat to American Federalist Journal.)

I wrote Bainbridge and asked whether he had met or interviewed any of the Minutemen volunteers, who have just completed a successful campaign to monitor and reduce illegal immigration on the southern border despite the most determined efforts by the ACLU and the open-borders lobby to sabotage and intimidate them.

“I’ve seen them interviewed,” the professor wrote back.

I inquired further: How many? Which ones? Just the lead organizers or some of the rank-and-file volunteers as well? What exactly did they say that led you to the conclusion that they were “nuts?”

No response yet.

Unlike Bainbridge, I have corresponded with, interviewed, and met personally with dozens of Minutemen volunteers over the past month–most recently at the Hold Their Feet to the Fire dinner in Washington, D.C., organized by former San Diego mayor and veteran talk show host Roger Hedgecock. The grass-roots lobbying campaign involved 18 talk show hosts and over 400 citizen volunteers who paid their own way, including the Minuteman Project leaders and scores of their members.

Among those I met were retired law enforcement officers, retired and active-duty military personnel, teachers, small businessmen, Republican activists, and many legal immigrants. Also among the Minuteman Project’s outspoken supporters in D.C. last week: Muriel Watson, the feisty widow of a Border Patrol agent who organized the “Light up the Border” campaign in 1990. Calif. Rep. Duncan Hunter and Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo greeted the crowd and applauded their efforts.

In the Detroit area recently, I met with mainstream Republican activists inspired by the Minutemen to help organize a similar effort on the northern border. Among them were naturalized Americans from Poland and South America and many children of legal immigrants. Not a single racist in the crowd.

Their “nutty” agenda includes providing full funding for the Border Patrol, detention, and interior enforcement increases promised by President Bush when he signed the so-called intelligence reform law last December.

It includes the “nutty” idea that we should enforce federal employer sanctions that have been on the books since 1986 and ensure that employers have the means to verify Social Security numbers.

It includes the “nutty” ideas that people here illegally should be barred from getting driver’s licenses and barred from voting in our elections.

It includes the “nutty” idea that illegal alien criminals should not be released blindly into the public to commit more crimes.

And it includes the “nutty” idea–based on past, real-world experience–that another mass illegal alien amnesty without increased enforcement would lead to more fraud, more law-breaking, and less security.

Professor Bainbridge’s response is to shrug his shoulders, obsess over the Hispanic vote in California, and attack anyone who disagrees with his open-borders pandering strategy as a supporter of “the party of apartheid.”

Apartheid?!?!

Now, tell me, who’s nuts?

Related: A CNN interview with Minuteman volunteer Lupe Moreno, a Mexican-American who supports beefing up the border and enforcing immigration laws. Guess she’s “nuts,” too.

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