Those opposing immigration used for profit and votes.

On the one hand you've got Minutemen founder, Chris Simcox, funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars of donations intended for building fences along the border into the coffers of neo-con organizations like Diener Consultants, raising serious questions about where $1.6 mil in missing Minutemen funds have gone, and causing in a major rift in the border vigilante community that could put an end to the movement.

On the other hand, Tom Tancredo's House Republican continue to tour the country trying to drum up support for Jim Sensenbrenner's House border security bill (HR4437) in spite of the fact that Sensenbrenner himself has no intention of ever having the bill become a law, stating he'd rather scrap all the current legislation and “start with a clean piece of paper and put together a clean bill that is neither the House bill nor the Senate bill".

It appears at first glance that the "border security" movement is in disarray and is on the verge of collapse … but in all things political there are always winners and losers.


tags: immigration, Minutemen, fencegate , Tancredo, hypocrisy



One winner of course are those who support rational, comprehensive, reform that secures the borders while still allowing for safe and reasonable levels of immigration and deals practically and humanely with the 12 mil undocumented immigrants already living and working in the US.

BUT .. Simcox is an obvious winner also … he just moved from a hovel in Tombstone to a tawny neighborhood Scottsdale…and works with Washington insiders like William Kristol, editor of the neoconservative Weekly Standard and co-founder of the Project for the New American Century … nice work for a guy who five years ago was an "actor" in a local "gun-fight" roadside attraction huh?

Tancredo…he's a winner also. He gets to start his 2008 presidential campaign early stirring up a firestorm of immigration debate, while all along working to make sure that no solution will ever come out of Congress…. It's too good a campaign issue….why would he solve the problem when he and his fellow members of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus can run on this issue for years, collecting votes and campaign contributions.

The losers in this situation …. Those who have given hard earned money to Simcox so he can become a neo-con media star, or have put their trust in House Republican who have promised to secure the borders while all along making no real effort to make that situation a reality.

All is fair in war and politics … and those who have put their trust in Simcox or Tancredo and his House Republicans, deserve what they get I guess. They should have seen these flim-flam men coming, and known from that start that they were being taken for a ride.

But in this case it just seems as these guys have taken PT Barnum's adage that "there's a sucker born every minute" to the extreme. They have played on people's fears and concerns and in the end have used them for profit and power.