President Bush yesterday said he opposes a civilian project to monitor illegal aliens crossing the border, characterizing them as "vigilantes."
He said he would pressure Congress to further loosen immigration law.
More than 1,000 people — including 30 pilots and their private planes — have volunteered for the Minuteman Project, beginning next month along the Arizona-Mexico border. Civilians will monitor the movement of illegal aliens for the month of April and report them to the Border Patrol...
Slightly incorrect. Vigilantes are a group that forms to *execute* punishment, not to *assist* law enforcement. Were these real vigilantes, they would be erecting gibbets and hanging illegals from them as an (effective) detterent to others. If this group is brushed aside, the end result might be creation of a real vigilante movement. Would the government commit the resources to arrest vigilantes when it would not do so to arrest illegals? And how many illegals would be turned back just by witnessing an empty noose hanging on a tree branch? Would that be a "hate crime"? What about simple posters that, in Spanish, tell illegals to "go home"? |