Rui Wang Columnist

What's wrong with the following analogy? The Massachusetts Minutemen of the American Revolutionary War is to the British Army as a volunteer vigilante militia is to illegal immigrants who cross the Arizona-Mexico border.

If you believe the leaders of the Minuteman Project, stopping the influx of illegal immigrants coming in from Mexico is tantamount to fighting for independence from an oppressive monarchy. Last time I checked, the British aristocracy wasn't exactly sneaking across the pond to wash the colonialists' dishes or landscape their front yards.

For the entire month of April, the Minuteman Project plans to station concerned citizens along the border in Cochise County, near Tombstone, in order to "assist the U.S. Department of Homeland Security by observing and reporting illegal activity." Bringing firearms along is implicitly endorsed by a passing reference to the "free to carry" laws in Arizona. You can imagine the potential for tension.

The Project's website also claims the effort is motivated by a desire to stop those who break the law, rather than racism. Don't believe that for a second. The Minuteman Project has been generating an incredible amount of interest among neo-nazi and white supremacist websites on the internet – so much so that the Southern Poverty Law Center, an anti-hate legal organization based in Alabama, is tracking the Project.

What goes better with vigilante "justice" than Tombstone, Arizona? Lawlessness virtually runs through the (silver) veins in this part of Cochise County. The romanticization of the wild west along with what Daily Star reporter Michael Marizco calls the "'sexy' topic of hundreds of people going into Cochise County... to do a job the federal government can't do" is fueling a great deal of national and international media interest in the Minuteman Project.

Zoe Hammer-Tomizuka, a member of the activist group Border Action Network (BAN), views this media attention negatively. "It allows the anti-immigrant movement to have undue influence in framing the national debate over immigration reform," said Hammer-Tomizuka, "it doesn't give equal voice to groups who are actually affected."

They definitely have a point. It's easy to fill a column with details of how some closed-minded assholes plan on dragging out the guns and playing cops and robbers. Putting the emphasis on that stuff is like taking the sensationalistic Fox News approach. It's important to be aware that these groups exist, but not to overblow their significance.

The real significance of the Minuteman Project and many other like-minded groups is that they reflect the muddled immigration philosophy of the United States. The groups' racist agendas are fed and developed by what Hammer-Tomizuka refers to as the giant contradiction in U.S. immigration policy: "there's a big political show of trying to stop immigration [but] at the same time there is the tacit agreement that the worker should come across the border" for the sake of economic interests.

This contradiction sets up a dishonest climate that allows coyotes, human smugglers, to thrive. It also feeds into the fears of the working class who feel illegal immigrants are at an advantage because they can be paid illegal wages. This leads to the culture of militia groups who view illegal immigration as a physical invasion of the United States, rather than the natural effect of an economic gradient.

Those most affected by these attitudes are the residents who live in the border towns – Mexicans and Mexican-Americans who are often subject to civil rights violations such as racial profiling in the course of day-to-day activities such as going to the grocery store or driving to school.

According to BAN, immigration reform is imminent, but it is critical that those who live in border towns and who are most affected get a loud, clear voice in shaping legislation. Senator John McCain and Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy are currently working on immigration reform legislation, but McCain has joked that there are as many pieces of proposed immigration legislation as there are senators.

The Bush administration has been moving towards a progressive temporary worker program to allow legal participation by immigrants and to stop their exploitation. The most positive aspect of the program – entitled "Promoting Compassion" – would grant current undocumented aliens temporary worker status to allow travel back and forth between their homeland and the United States. It would give workers the opportunity to travel freely across the border without having to rely on smugglers.

It's a step in the right direction, so let's hope that the idea of compassion doesn't get diluted in the details of immigration reform legislation.

To learn more or to get involved, http://www.borderaction.org and http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/immigration/ are good places to start.

Rui Wang is a third-year law student. She can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.

Update: An abridged version of this column was originally posted. This is the full version.

Editor's note: This column has been edited from the version that initially ran in print. The change reflects a quote that had been incorrectly attributed.