Immigration looks to be main issue in '06 voting

Volunteers have been patrolling the U.S. border.
DALLAS MORNING NEWS
FABENS, Texas -- Radio talk-show host J.C. McClain could hardly contain his excitement as he recalled the time he had to pull his pistol in front of an illegal immigrant whose pants were still wet from splashing across the Rio Grande.
The exasperated man told McClain to get out of the way, "the Border Patrol has already been through here." When a member of the man's group picked up a rock, McClain pulled his gun and held it in front of his belt, pointing at the ground. The man dropped the rock, and the group trudged back into Mexico.
McClain related the story to his Brownwood, Texas, audience the next day from an improvised radio booth in a borrowed house a few miles from the border near El Paso.
"It just made our day," he said, laughing as he described the confrontation.
A few years ago, such armed volunteer patrol groups were almost universally considered dangerous, vigilante racists on the fringe of society. And while such elements still inhabit the "Minuteman movement," more sophisticated groups -- such as the North Texas-based "Texas Minutemen" -- are tapping into mainstream concerns about border security in a post-Sept. 11, 2001, America.
"They're the next generation," said Devin Burghart, who directs an anti-racism project for the Center for New Community, a Chicago-based civil-rights group. "They're slightly more sophisticated, they've been able to reach a larger audience. ... The political terrain has shifted to where immigration is probably going to be the No. 1 issue in the 2006 electoral races. That's not something you saw when they got their start."
Moving to the forefront
Among the evidence that illegal immigration is moving to the political forefront:
Hundreds of volunteers from all over the country wrapped up a monthlong patrol along the U.S.-Mexico border recently, hoping to show that more agents there would solve the problem of illegal immigration. In the past six months, about 40 citizen border watch groups have sprung up in more than a dozen states, watchdog groups say. The Texas Minutemen were among those formed after an April vigil on the Arizona border drew international attention.
Border states have requested federal funds to fight illegal immigration. A bill on Capitol Hill to deputize citizen patrols and give them millions in federal funds has 46 co-authors.
Businesses that in the past have condemned the movement -- and some of whom have benefited from cheap immigrant labor -- now say the border situation merits action.
Out of control
"The situation is out of control, and first and foremost it's an issue of national security," said Bill Hammond, president of the Texas Association of Business.
Businesses have felt the crunch of illegal immigration, Hammond says, because as the numbers of such immigrants increase, the burden grows higher on employers who face stiff penalties for hiring them -- even if they've made a good-faith effort to hire legal residents.
The Minutemen represent concerns over immigration that spread far beyond their numbers. Ranchers losing money when their crops are trampled or fences cut; contractors who say they're losing bids to competitors using cheap immigrant labor instead of union workers; public hospitals with strapped budgets from caring for indigent immigrants; and school systems fighting for bilingual-education dollars.
Immigrant advocates counter that workers contribute to the economy and even pay Social Security taxes even though the vast majority will never see a benefit check.
For some patrol volunteers, such as Tom Bishop of Decatur, Texas, who is retired from a career in law enforcement and as a commercial airline pilot, the motivation is better defenses against terrorism.
"This country needs to tighten its borders with the current terrorist situation that we have," said Bishop, who flew a friend's plane during the El Paso border watch that just ended. "We just don't know who all these people are who are coming over."