Word: minutemen
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...problem. The most divisive issue among them is whether undocumented immigrants should be required to return to their home country before applying for a work visa or whether they could get guest-worker status without leaving the U.S. The second, more lenient option has been attacked by the Minutemen and other conservative groups as tantamount to amnesty...
...they could go and pick up a worker or two. O'Reilly created a day-labor center, which cleared the sidewalk and created jobs. No sooner did he do that, however, than Herndon resident George Taplin, a software engineer and Navy veteran who is the local leader of the Minutemen, began organizing volunteers to videotape laborers going to the center and even follow them to their work sites. Taplin then handed over the information to the IRS and state licensing agencies. "The laborers hide their faces when they see us coming, and the employers don't stop [to pick them...
...Reilly, who says he has received hate mail and crank calls since setting up the day-labor center, wonders if the Minutemen even care whether they get an official response. "Several of the national groups had an interest in making us a test case when we were trying to solve a local issue," he says. The real goal for the Minutemen, he argues, is creating nationwide publicity for their cause...
...Minutemen have a way to go to sell their message--or at least themselves as its messenger. In a recent CBS News poll, 65% of respondents said they oppose the group's border patrols. But in the same poll, 75% of respondents said the U.S. government is not doing enough to keep illegal immigrants out. Says Jacoby: "The Minutemen are a small group, but they can be the tail that wags...
Until Congress decides, the Minutemen are likely to keep showing up at labor centers to take pictures, and the immigrants will keep coming to look for jobs. What happens between them will continue to make witnesses queasy, not just because of the looming risk of violence but also because of a sense that the system is badly broken. "This is America," says Keenan Strand, owner of the McDonald's restaurant across the street from the Macehualli center. "You can't just walk up to someone with brown skin, photograph them and demand their papers." For now, it appears...