Not surprisingly, the serene-looking co-founder of the 6-year-old Minuteman Civil Defense Crops came to the breakfast table at the Radisson Hotel fully armed.
With a cache of information intended to intellectually paralyze anyone who believes in open borders — such as Mayor Villaraigosa of Los Angeles and, evidently, both of the Presidential candidates.
Chris Simcox, who still resembles the boy next door even as middle age beckons, came to Culver City on Wednesday night to motivate the members of the Los Angeles Republican Alliance into becoming more combative about the hourly flow of illegal immigration into the metropolitan area.
Twenty million illegals, he estimates, “are hiding in plain sight.” But the good people are not the ones he seems to be marking.
He has more numbers in his briefcase than a professor of math, but he prefers to reason with his audiences rather than to aim a baseball bat in their direction. At breakfast, he was so calm he could have been talking about the latest Henry James novel he had finished.
No brimstone. No fire. No external passion. Just a soft-spoken overview of what he maintains is a frantic crisis that demands immediate attention. He is not a preacher out shopping for people interested in saving the world, not nearly anything so grandiose.
A Problem of Many Colors
Mr. Simcox’s main target appears to be the widespread criminal element among illegals, a far-flung and diverse population that spans Russians, Asians and Middle Easterners as well as the heavily publicized Hispanic element.
Minutemen leaders say that through the diligence and vigilance of their 104 chapters across the country, more than 30,000 illegals have been turned in to legal authorities since ’02. But the mode of Mr. Simcox’s presentation always is low-key.
He emphasizes that the mission of his nationwide organization, born in Arizona shortly after 9/11, is vigilance not vigilantism.
“The message is always the same,” Mr. Simcox says quietly, “about education., to educate people about the scope of the problem of illegal immigration, about our efforts to advance reform. We ask people to work locally by electing the right people who have the courage to deal with this divisive issue and not get stuck in thinking that the problem is intractable because of its size.
“We would like people to look at illegal immigration as a rule of law issue, a human issue, and to make the right decisions.
“On the national level, again we talk about electing the right people. We are working legislatively in various states, trying to duplicate the model legislation we have been able to enact in Arizona,” which is home base for Mr. Simcox, a native of Moline, IL, who was a teacher in with LAUSD and later with Wildwood Elementary.
“What we are trying to show is that the states have more courage (than Washington) and more ability to get the job done, all the while sort of taking the federal government by the ear and leading them along.”
Question: How does Mr. Simcox gain the attention of his audiences?
“I use a power-point presentation that is comprehensive. We talk about how divisive the issue is, and, unfortunately that it has become that way because of the media. We talk about problems. We have people dying in our deserts. We have people who are fleeing, economically and politically, from countries that are corrupt and will not provide for their people.
“We have businesses in America that get away with exploiting people for their cheap labor. They don’t care about the human issue. They just care about cheap labor and their profits.
“We have groups like the Chamber of Commerce that promote the exploitation of human beings in the name of supporting business. And then we have a drug war that is deadly and out of control. Then you have environmental damage that illegal immigrants are causing along with the political cowardice of people in Washington, D.C.”
Question: Why are national politicians reluctant to move in a sweeping away against illegal immigrants?
“ There is no denying that politics plays a role. Besides that, it is not just a lack of will on their part. Politicians are afraid of being called names, but meanwhile people are dying. You have a national security issue and a public safety issue.
“Los Angeles is basically controlled by…
“Well, you’ve got the police, you’ve got the gangs, and citizens are caught in the middle. People can’t arm themselves. They can’t defend themselves. They rely on law enforcement, which is outmanned and outgunned.
“You have an estimated 160,000 gang members in L.A. County alone.”
(Mr. Simcox’s story will be continued in the next edition.)
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps may be contacted at minutemanhq.com.
