Jean Lindsay believes illegal immigration is the No. 1 issue facing this country.
"It affects our whole way of life, our culture, our education system . . . It's breaking our laws . . . they won't speak our language . . . the construction industry has been taken over by illegal aliens," she said.
The retired Salt Lake decorator isn't alone in her concerns. She was one of about 150 people who attended a summer Orem forum featuring Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., a vocal opponent of immigration reform that includes amnesty.
Three Utah groups want to halt illegal immigration — Utahns for Immigration Reform and Enforcement, the Utah Minuteman Project, and the Citizens Council on Illegal Immigration in St. George. Together, they claim about 300 to 500 active members.
Those involved in efforts to curb the tide of illegal immigrants point out that they have no problem with immigration. A few are immigrants themselves, or have relatives who are. They are against "illegal" immigration.
When volunteers from across the country traveled in April to guard a 25-mile section of the Arizona-Mexico border as part of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, many civil rights activists called them armed and dangerous vigilantes, with racial motives.
But Utahns who participated compare it to neighborhood watch without racial motivation. They say they brought attention to porous borders and called the border patrol to report illegal crossers.
Organizers said the watch was a success. Smaller-scale border watches have continued, and another large effort to include all four southern border states is happening this month. About 11 Utahns plan to participate.
To the anti-immigrant movement, the solution to the nation's immigration woes is simple: Seal the border and enforce laws that prohibit hiring illegal immigrants. That would prompt most illegal immigrants to go home, they say.
Another step: Empower local law officers to become proactive in enforcing immigration laws.
After April's patrol, electrical engineer Alex Segura, Wally McCormick, a grandfather of four, and others created the Utah Minuteman Project.
Since then, local Minutemen have protested at banks for accepting the driving privilege card issued to illegal immigrants and at the state Capitol construction site for suspected use of illegal labor.
Utahns' attitudes on the Minutemen and their politics seem mixed, according to a recent Deseret Morning News/KSL-TV poll of 413 Utah households conducted by Dan Jones & Associates.
The poll, with a 5 percent margin of error, showed 74 percent of those polled supported the efforts of private independent groups such as the Utah Minuteman Project.
However, 57 percent of those polled said they favor a program that would allow undocumented immigrants now living in America to remain in the country and earn citizenship without penalty.
Immigration arguments
As he eyed the southern border, Minuteman Darrel Wood says that a Mexican reporter told him why so many people come to America illegally.
It relates to the North American Free Trade Agreement, he says. "Farmers can't compete with their own government. They're forced to sell their farms, sell everything and walk."
Wood is among those who sees a growing surge of illegal immigrants threatening to overwhelm social systems from hospitals to schools, although he and others have expressed sympathy for those risking their lives to cross the border.
They also see a closed border as critical to national security in the post 9/11 world. They acknowledge the overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants aren't dangerous. But the borders are also open to criminals, including drug dealers and terrorists. Some opponents want a temporary halt to all immigration while the nation verifies who's here.
Minuteman McCormick, 68, says illegal immigration was never an issue for him until he visited his hometown of Anaheim, Calif., last year.
"I noticed a drastic difference and a feeling from most people that I wasn't welcome anymore," he said.
McCormick is typical of the opponents' demographic— many Utah Minutemen are non-Hispanic, white and senior citizens.
Of the opponents, many who attend meetings and protests don't want to be publicly identified.
It's a fear of being labeled a "racist," or a fear for their safety, Segura says. "Too many people think it's a criminal element," he said.
For example, one elderly woman, at a recent meeting, said she believes her neighbors are illegal immigrants, and she fears increasing crime in her neighborhood.
The Minutemen are Utah's newest anti-illegal immigration group, but there is an earlier group organized by two Utah County residents.
In summer 2003, Mike Sizer and Alma Morales founded Utahns for Immigration Reform and Enforcement, with the help of former state lawmaker Matt Throckmorton.
Others, including Segura, joined in the effort. Sizer said about 30 people attended the group's first meeting, and its membership increased to 350 after Tancredo's recent visit.
UFIRE describes itself as an organization of citizens concerned about Utah's laws that members believe reward illegal immigration.
Sizer grew up in Southern California. "Watching the whole process, I hear the same arguments here in Utah now that I heard 15-20 years ago in California."
He says these are arguments such as: We need the labor. We won't be able to eat in restaurants without illegal immigrants.
"The demand for people to come to this country. There are probably hundreds of millions of people who would like to come here," Sizer said. "People like my relatives, from a relatively wealthy nation such as Germany, want to come here."
Racism a factor?
At Tancredo's speech, a few audience members questioned his strict stand against illegal immigration.
However, the overwhelming majority in the audience, including Utah Valley State College students Jessica Atwood, 18, and Ray Palmer, 19, of Orem, didn't need to be persuaded.
"We need to protect America against pollution," Palmer told a reporter.
"Illegal immigrants," Atwood replied. "Same thing. Yeah."
The two were apparently joking. Atwood clarified that "America's full of multiculture. That's great. There's a difference between taking jobs Americans need and making a life here."
But to longtime civil rights activist Archie Archuleta, their words exemplified what he sees as "one great, big, ugly pollutant in this country. It is called racism and ethnocentrism."
He sees it as dehumanizing a group of people, most of whom have committed only one crime — crossing a border illegally.
"The dehumanizing element is used in much the same way the Germans used it against the Jews and the gypsies," said Archuleta, chairman of the Utah Coalition of La Raza. "If something is wrong with these people, then they're no longer human, then you can commit all sorts of atrocities against them."
The anti-immigrant movement, he says, isn't new, but now "it's more virulent, it's more widespread."
Civil rights groups, including the Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center, have reported that white supremacists support the Minuteman movement — and even joined the April border patrol.
Shaun Walker, chairman of the National Alliance, widely considered a white supremacist organization but which calls itself white separatist, says his organization agrees with the Minutemen on immigration and passes out literature at anti-immigration meetings.
The Utah Minutemen deny that white supremacists have infiltrated their group. They start their meetings with an affirmation against racism. They try to steer attention to a porous border, businesses that hire undocumented workers and politicians who refuse to act.
Segura is frustrated that the immigration debate keeps coming back to the "race card."
"I'm a Hispanic. This isn't about race," Segura said. "This is about law enforcement (officers) not doing their jobs. It's about businesses pandering to politicians."
He says he judges people on their character, not their skin color.
Segura and other Minutemen say racism cuts both ways. They point to extremes on the Hispanic side, such as the La Voz de Aztlan (The Voice of Aztlan) Web site. It professes some of the same anti-Semitic beliefs held by white supremacists, they say.
During Minuteman meetings, Segura steers the discussion away from "Mexicans." When a Minuteman protester told a reporter something about "all these Mexicans taking jobs," Segura said, "I told him I didn't want him to come to any more Minuteman meetings or demonstrations."
"This isn't about a particular race. We know people from all over the world are illegally in America," Segura said. "The only thing we advocate is the rule of law."
Segura has criticized Barry Hatch, who founded the anti-illegal immigration group Save America last year, as "minimized by some of his racist comments."
Tony Yapias thinks his own treatment at Save America and Minuteman functions is proof that the anti-immigration debate targets all Hispanics. After a Save America meeting last year, a woman assumed he was illegal and Mexican. Her demeanor changed when Yapias said he was from Peru.
Archuleta said he sees a dangerous edge to the anti-immigration debate, but he believes that most concerned about illegal immigration aren't racists.
"I think the majority of people really feel, particularly since 9/11, that our borders are too porous," he said.
Still, Archuleta sees too many people characterizing illegal immigrants as "nasty, drug-selling criminals." That, he said, is part of the dehumanization process. He adds to that popular phrases like, "What don't you understand about illegal?"
Archuleta does, however, understand that illegal immigration is a passionate issue.
"Whichever side you're on, it produces passionate feelings and rhetoric," Archuleta said. "I'm as guilty as the next one."
Drawing support
Anti-illegal immigration activists have long claimed their complaints about porous borders have fallen on policymakers' deaf ears.
A few years ago, Utah lawmakers passed an English-only law. More recently, they passed provisions such as in-state tuition and drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants. Those two laws were targets of UFIRE, which unsuccessfully lobbied for their repeal in 2004.
But the tables turned somewhat in the last legislative session. A bill to repeal illegal immigrants' drivers' licenses and state ID cards stalled, but another provision passed into law. It replaced drivers' licenses of illegal immigrants with driving privilege cards that can't be used for identification.
Many anti-illegal immigration activists acknowledge it's a step in the right direction, although they want to see illegal immigrant driving privileges repealed.
This past summer UFIRE gained momentum when the joint Interim Education Committee voted to recommend repealing in-state tuition privileges for undocumented students.
Sizer said UFIRE is also eyeing legislation that would require proof of legal residence before a person can receive social benefits from the state. The wording, he says, is similar to Arizona's controversial Proposition 200.
The Minutemen also seek a state version of federal proposals to require employers to verify an employee's legal status. Rep. Glenn Donnelson, R-North Ogden, who is sponsoring the tuition repeal bill, says he is looking "very closely" at required employer verification.
They've met with area mayors and law enforcement officials to seek more involvement in immigration enforcement, though no local officials have yet committed to anything.
Meanwhile, well-established Latino civil rights organizations such as the Utah Coalition of La Raza and Raza Political Action Committee drew a crowd of more than 1,000 people to the state Capitol this past session to try to persuade lawmakers to let them keep their drivers' licenses. Later, hundreds showed up at a rally organized by the University of Utah's MEChA chapter.
New groups such as Utahns for Comprehensive Immigration Reform and Proyecto Latino de Utah (Utah Latino Project) also work to counter those against illegal immigration.
UCIR supports comprehensive immigration reform that would include a way for undocumented immigrants to obtain legal status has started an online petition to Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch and Rep. Chris Cannon, both R-Utah, with at least 129 signatures so far.
Yapias, former director of the Utah Office of Hispanic Affairs, organized Proyecto Latino to perform a service day. Some in the Hispanic community opposed the service day, saying it sent the wrong message that Hispanics were indebted to the white community.
Yapias, however, said about 1,000 people turned out for the service day. Now the efforts of Proyecto Latino have turned to fund raising to help address issues facing the Latino community, he said.
"I've talked to several hundred people who called to say, 'This is great. How can we become involved?' " he said.
"That tells me that our community is listening to what we are doing," he said. "They are paying careful attention to the issues directly impacting them. . . . They want to be involved."
Coming Wednesday: Hurting or helping the economy?
E-mail: dbulkeley@desnews.com