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Minutemen Border Patrol Gets Results
Some Members of Congress Take Notice; Offer Praise, Support
Leaders of the Minuteman Project to protect the southern border were welcomed to Washington as heroes April 27. “You are doing an enormously important job,” said Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), chairman of the House Immigration Caucus. “You are real heroes—each of you represent literally millions of Americans” who want the border protected from illegal immigrants.
Many of the lawmakers and Minutemen participants wore buttons identifying them as belonging to the “undocumented border patrol.” This was a poke at the euphemistic reference to illegal aliens as “undocumented.”
President Bush should “meet these people he called ‘vigilantes’ and apologize,” Tancredo said. Without the Minuteman Project, he said, recent House legislation to make illegal immigration more difficult “would not have happened.”
Rep. Virgil Goode (R-Va.) said illegal aliens cost taxpayers $68 billion a year and keeping them out would help balance the budget.
“Every American should tell Congress to stop talking of amnesty and enforce the law” on illegal immigration, said Rep. J.G. Hayworth (R-Ariz.)
Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) said he has introduced legislation to prohibit banks from accepting Mexican consular cards as identification. If here illegally, he said, “you should not be able to use our federal and state banking system.”
Immigration will be “the political issue of 2006,” said Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.). “You are heroes,” he told the Minutemen. “Thank you.”
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