Posts on Save Our State

In case you thought the anti-immigrant fever of 2006 had broken, restrictionist think tanks are still promoting restriction, states are still passing immigrant crackdowns, and  there are still plenty of hard-core cranks across the country. A story from CBS 13 in Sacramento, California featured one man ennobled by his passion for confronting day laborers with a trailer-mounted billboard saying “DEPORT THEM ALL.”

[Davi Rodriguez] drives the sign up and down the streets of Sacramento where day laborers wait for work, sometimes videotaping the reactions and uploading them to YouTube. Workers we talked to say they feel harassed, and they're losing jobs.

(The CBS 13 site has video of the report.)

Harassment of day laborers is a common tactic of local anti-immigrant vigilantes. Rodriguez’s billboard directed viewers to go to the website of Save Our State, the group that wrote the blueprint for local immigration crackdowns in Hazleton, Pennsylvania and dozens of other cities. Two years ago, Save Our State founder Joseph Turner described his method of “saving” California from becoming a “Third World cesspool”:

"With as little as five people you can shut down a day-laborer center," says Mr. Turner, because employers will be too intimidated to stop and hire them. Contractors have been deterred from hiring from these sites during the protests and in several days that followed. Home Depot declines to comment on Mr. Turner.

As Turner explained then in another interview, this is all a way of expressing himself as a “proud nationalist”:

"I believe this country is superior and I believe our culture is superior to all others," he declared.

He sees illegal immigrants as the pre-eminent threat to that culture.

After Minutemen co-founder Jim Gilchrist endorsed Mike Huckabee last week, other anti-immigrant border vigilantes rushed to repudiate their erstwhile comrade. Chris Simcox, who split with Gilchrist in 2005, dismissed the latter’s influence and criticized Huckabee’s “duplicitous” immigration program. The leader of another Minutemen splinter group called the endorsement “disturbing.”

A variety of anti-immigrant groups also came out of the woodwork to pile on Gilchrist in a letter distributed by Americans for Legal Immigration: “We denounce Jim Gilchrist's solo endorsement of a pro-amnesty and Open Borders candidate for President. Mr. Gilchrist does NOT speak for us!” Signatories included representatives of a number of local Minutemen franchises, a FAIR front group, Mothers Against Illegal Aliens, Save Our State, California Coalition for Immigration Reform, and many more.

This week, Gilchrist is facing heavy pressure from WorldNetDaily reporter Jerome Corsi, the premier advocate of the “North American Union” conspiracy theory. Corsi’s approach, rather than simply denouncing Gilchrist, was to confront him with the claim that Huckabee’s immigration program contained some element making it unacceptable to them. In response, Gilchrist “backtracked” on his endorsement, according to a Corsi article titled “Minuteman reconsiders Huckabee endorsement.”

The only problem with Corsi’s friendlier approach—helping Gilchrist along with his retraction of the endorsement—is that Gilchrist denies it:

But Gilchrist says Corsi's article is not accurate. "I am holding firm. I am endorsing Governor Mike Huckabee for president. I'm not wavering or waffling," he states.

And as for the WorldNetDaily report? "I have to say that Mr. Corsi really made me feel like he was interrogating me like a police investigator or a prosecuting attorney, rather than interviewing me," Gilchrist asserts. "He kept insisting that I was waffling -- and I did not say that; he kept saying that. And apparently he had an agenda."

But Corsi says he sticks by his story. "If Jim can't keep his story straight from one day to the other, ... I'll be happy to play back [for him] the recordings I made of him each day and Jim can listen to himself saying that he was going to reconsider the endorsement of Huckabee," he says.

What’s strangest about this exchange between Corsi and Gilchrist—with misunderstandings, hurt feelings, agendas—is that the two know each other very well. They wrote a book together on the Minutemen last year. Now, sadly, it seems they are no longer on speaking terms: Corsi’s latest article, which accuses Gilchrist of going soft, ends with the poignant line, “Gilchrist declined to comment.”

While efforts by the Right to build a religious coalition on immigration never panned out, anti-immigrant activists in California have been steadily building their own version of a relationship with the religious community. Activists with the San Diego Minuteman group spent their summer staging over-the-top protests at an area Catholic church accused of offering breakfast to day-laborers. And now, in Simi Valley, activists protested another church, this time for sheltering an undocumented mother and her U.S.-born son, in a reenactment of Elvira Arellano’s stand-off with authorities last year.

Activists with Save Our State reportedly planned on making a “citizen’s arrest” of the Simi Valley mother, reports the Ventura County Star. "I'm here because I'm for the movement for the illegals to go home,” explained one protester. The protest apparently became violent, as one anti-immigrant protester allegedly pepper-sprayed a pro-immigrant counter-protester, and several neo-Nazis showed up to hold their own mini-rally. The group “Mothers Against Illegal Aliens” also apparently made an appearance.

(Photo: Ventura County Star.)

But the confrontation took its strangest twist after the protest. The city of Simi Valley sent a bill for almost $40,000 to the United Church of Christ to cover increased police presence. Although the church did not plan the protest—it was organized by Save Our State, a group that inspired cities like Hazleton, Pennsylvania to pass their own anti-immigrant ordinances to fend off a “Third World cesspool”—and although the church did not call for any police presence, Simi Valley Mayor Paul Miller blames the church for “harboring an illegal immigrant” and “any potential violence as a result.”

Simi Valley apparently want to send a message: that they are on the side of Save Our State.

The City Council made it clear it doesn't want Liliana in a Simi Valley church.

"This city is not going to be known as sanctuary city,'" Miller said.

Hazleton, Pennsylvania Mayor Lou Barletta made national headlines last year when he pushed through an ordinance cracking down on undocumented immigrants, not only setting penalties for employers who hire them but also fining landlords who rent to them $1,000 per day. “Illegal immigrants are destroying the city,” declared the self-styled “small town defender,” who also signed an English-only measure. “I don't want them here, period.” As this blog pointed out, this was a sudden transformation for Barletta, who just months before had cited “the region’s new ethnic and cultural diversity” as cause for Hazleton’s unprecedented economic boom and “urban rejuvenation.” As Barletta testified before Congress and appeared on CNN’s “Lou Dobbs,” while cutting robocalls for Sen. Rick Santorum’s failed reelection campaign, his ordinance and copy-cat measures in other small cities began to tear apart communities.

How did Barletta come to decide on this dramatic course of action? Well, he poked around the Internet and found the website of Save Our State, run by Jim Turner, a “proud nationalist” who unsuccessfully pushed the measures in San Bernadino, California in order to ward off the threat from inferior cultures who would turn ours into a “Third World cesspool.”

This governance technique of finding model legislation by lurking on nativist Internet forums was one interesting fact revealed Wednesday during Barletta’s testimony in a federal lawsuit challenging the ordinances. Far more damning was Barletta’s inability to support his rhetoric accusing undocumented immigrants of “destroying the city”:

During five hours on the witness stand, Mr. Barletta said Hazleton is being ruined by violent crime, crowded schools and a clogged emergency room at the city's private hospital. He attributed many of the problems to what he called "illegal aliens," even though he admitted he had no idea how many such immigrants are in his city.

Lawyer Witold Walczak, of the American Civil Liberties Union, got the mayor to concede that he could not name a single instance where illegal immigrants had received service from Hazleton's fire department or health offic[e]. Mr. Barletta also was forced to admit he had no proof that illegal immigrants were the source of schools so crowded that numerous classes have to be taught in trailers. …

Mr. Barletta said crimes committed by illegal immigrants led to the controversial ordinances.  … Mr. Walczak, though, said Hazleton's own statistics show that illegal immigrants have committed only a handful of serious crimes. Of the 8,575 felonies in the city since 2000, about 20 were linked to illegal immigrants, Mr. Walczak said.

Barletta came back yesterday to face evidence of the lack of an immigrant crime wave:

 “When you have violent crimes committed, it takes away and chews at our quality of life. I don’t need numbers. These people,” he said, motioning to the opposing attorney, who have criticized his lack of statistics, “need numbers. The people in my city don’t need numbers.”

An article (temporary link) in today’s Wall Street Journal examines the rise of nativist groups and anti-immigrant sentiment – such as California’s “Save Our State,” which inspired small towns like Hazleton, Pennsylvania to attempt to crack down on immigrants through local ordinances:

Armed with a computer and less than $100, Joseph Turner two years ago formed a group called "Save Our State." His goal: save California from turning into a "Third World cesspool" of illegal immigrants, he says. The group doesn't have a formal membership, and Mr. Turner counts barely 2,000 people on his email list and message board.

Yet this meager base has proved to be a powerful springboard. Through his Web site, Mr. Turner has recruited supporters to hold confrontational protests outside Home Depot stores, where unauthorized workers often gather to seek jobs. He has also helped ignite a nationwide movement by local governments to crack down on illegal immigration. So far, about 10 towns have passed ordinances to drive out undocumented immigrants after getting the idea from Mr. Turner. Dozens of other towns are considering such measures. …

"With as little as five people you can shut down a day-laborer center," says Mr. Turner, because employers will be too intimidated to stop and hire them. Contractors have been deterred from hiring from these sites during the protests and in several days that followed. Home Depot declines to comment on Mr. Turner.

At a rally outside the day-laborer center in the ritzy coastal town of Laguna Beach, neo-Nazis and white supremacists waved Nazi and confederate flags. Mr. Turner says they weren't welcome at the event but that he couldn't stop them and that Save our State members left shortly after they arrived. Mr. Turner says he also deletes white-supremacist rhetoric when it pops up on his Web site's message board.

About a year ago, Mr. Turner drafted a three-page ordinance -- the "City of San Bernardino Illegal Immigrant Relief Act." Although it was derailed before it could come to a citywide vote, the ordinance went on to be imitated, and passed, by several towns and cities across the country.

Meanwhile, towns that adopted the Turner-inspired ordinances, like Riverside, New Jersey, are reeling as large parts of the community leave:

Dave Ercolani is glad he's retiring and closing his hardware store. It could be tough to stay in business now that the township, not long ago teeming with recent arrivals from Brazil, has adopted one of the nation's toughest anti-immigration laws.

The town council adopted an ordinance in July that makes it a crime for businesses to knowingly employ illegal immigrants or for landlords to rent to them. Even though the law isn't being enforced, its effects can be felt because of a fast loss of hundreds of residents who have left town since the law was adopted.

"This town was starting to move," said Ercolani, who said he does not know whether the law was right or wrong. "I feel that they killed everything."

Riverside is an old industrial town on the banks of the Delaware River. Its downtown has wide sidewalks and wider streets lined with proud two-story buildings. Many of them - more than a few months ago - have "Apartment for Rent" or "Store Closed" signs. And on Wednesday afternoon, there was almost no life on the sidewalks. People who work downtown say that's a big change from before the ordinance was adopted.

While a number of localities have adopted or are considering implementing anti-immigrant ordinances modeled after Hazleton, Pennsylvania’s “Illegal Immigration Relief Act,” Hazleton’s measure was almost directly adopted from a failed petition drive in San Bernardino, California, written by Joseph Turner, head of a group called Save Our State. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports on how the effort spread from California to the small town of Valley Park, Missouri, where – despite a lack of problems with its immigrant community – police have begun enforcing the new law:

From the beginning, this is how Joseph Turner envisioned his idea to target illegal immigrants would play out: Local communities taking up his cause and moving the issue from the halls of Congress into the chambers of city council. Today, the 29-year-old activist from California is watching cities across the country enact or consider laws to crack down on illegal immigration. They are working off a blueprint he wrote. And some, including Valley Park, have already made it law. …

Turner, founder of the anti-illegal immigration group Save Our State and an aide to a state legislator, touted his plan on the radio and sent out hundreds of e-mails to city officials throughout the nation. He failed to get enough signatures to force a vote on the law in San Bernardino. But word of his cause spread. And eventually, a handful of municipalities adopted ordinances nearly identical to the one he championed.

Turner describes himself as enjoying a “fulfilling experience” in response to stories about families being driven out of Valley Park. He also outlines his ideology:

Turner, who believes state and federal leaders have moved too slowly on immigration reform, describes himself as a "proud nationalist."

"I believe this country is superior and I believe our culture is superior to all others," he declared.

He sees illegal immigrants as the pre-eminent threat to that culture.

Turner is echoing sentiments expressed by Samuel Huntington and Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado), who warn of a “clash of civilizations” that threatens what Huntington calls America’s “Anglo-Protestant values.” Last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported how such an approach tends to attract white supremacists, who see an outfit like Save Our State as a “Trojan horse” for extremists to influence mainstream politics.