Why is Bush against the minutemen and other border patrol volunteers?

I know that there is at least one thread here with a similar topic, but I'm not going to talk about the news story directly. I am going to talk about Bush's reaction to the efforts of these people. I support what they are doing, and I commend them for having the guts to do this. At least some people are actually aware that the borders are wide open.

Now, of course, some of you will say they are vigilantes, like Bush said, because they are not the Border Patrol. Fine, I can agree with that. But, if the govt and BP were doing their job, the people wouldn't have to take it into their own hands. The funny thing is that the WOT apparently ignores the possible threat of the boogeyman al-CIAda from our borders, especially the southern one.

Now, why does Bush call these people vigilantes? Maybe because he's for open borders and amnesty for the illegals. The reasons for this are quite deep, so I won't go into the why. All I'm saying here is that the fact that Bush is against these brave volunteers should sound off bells in people's heads.

I'm glad these people are doing this. The invasion of the illegals must be fought.

The minutemen, whether you agree with them or not, represent an as yet uncurbed danger to society as far as the government is concerned. The danger being that people still do occasionally get up off their rear ends and do something about a problem. This is very disturbing to people that have worked their whole careers to foster an environment where things go through the proper channels and are only taken care of if actual policy is in favor of taking action. In this case not only have people dared to contrive to do something about a problem, but they have done so when it is glaringly obvious that this administration does not want anything done about said problem.

Bush is a Republican and they are for moderately higher unemployement and lower wages. This is the benefit of imigrants. He's even mentioned he'd like to allow all imigrants to stay in the US and possibly even opening up a more lax policy regarding working in the US.

High unemployement means people are willing to work for less and you can choose between more qualified people. How many people with degrees do you know working somewhere that people aren't required to have degrees.

bush, because he's a politician, has to be politically correct, and the minutemen, although i seriously support them, are so far from politically correct. thus, bush has to say they're bad. it sucks, but deal with it. truth is, i think he actually somewhat supports them, but politics keeps him from doing so publicly.

Heck our nations security and seventy is being challenged at the southern border. Bush should have he guts for the sake of this country to sign an executive orders that send the National Guard the southern border. I wish more people like the Minuteman do this so we can protect this country and its seventy. I’m not against all immigration but damn 1millioni legal aliens each year come-on now I doubt all of those people are looking for jobs.

west point it is sovereignty not seventy.... Sorry I just keep running across your posts and can tell you are passionate about your views, but man it makes my teeth hurt having to mentally correct that every time I see it.

Originally posted by astroblade
bush, because he's a politician, has to be politically correct, and the minutemen, although i seriously support them, are so far from politically correct. thus, bush has to say they're bad. it sucks, but deal with it. truth is, i think he actually somewhat supports them, but politics keeps him from doing so publicly.

Deal with what? Waves of illegals coming in and driving the wages down? Bush and his cronies wanting to give them legal status once they're here? Do you know how bad unemployment REALLY is here now? PC has nothing to do with this.

WestPoint, I actually agree with you on this one. This administration is so quick to send our men overseas, yet they balk at the idea of beefing up our borders. Hell, I saw an article where they were saying that al-Qaeda (the boogeyman) was sneaking across the southern border, and still nothing is done. I bet illegals don't even get scared when you yell "La Migra" anymore...

Uh, Sugarlump, what was the point of your first post?

Why is Bush against the minutemen and other border patrol volunteers?

There is a simple answer to this:
They are of no use to him at the moment. Bush has nothing to gain by supporting them (infact he stands to lose quite a bit of the Latino support that has helped get him into office again if he were to take a proactive stance on the issue).

Politics, pure politics. Step up Bush and be a man. You won the election now it is time to speak your mind and crack down and take a stand. A stand a little closer to home. Iraq counts but only for our oil supply and the Iraqi's freedom. Bush needs to do something for America and Americans.

Why against them?

Because they are a vigilante group interfereing with the border patrol's activities. How can he be 'for' them anyway? He's the president, if he was 'for' them, then he'd be admiting that he isn't doing enough to secure the borders. He can't say 'the situation is so poor that untrained unqaulified unregulated citizen gangs are beneficial to the situation'.

He was governor of texas, he's well aware of the border issue, and he's obviously decided that its good as it is. The best thing to do in terms of immigration right now is increase border security and make it much easier to become a legal alien. Make it so that its well worth it for people to become legal.

Because they are a vigilante group interfereing with the border patrol's activities

How is that? If, just take the lowest numbers reported by the BP themselves, they are allowing over 1 million to cross the border illegaly each year. The BP do not have the manpower, technology, nor the financial and political backing that they desperately need in order to perform their duties.
At this point in time, the BP who I admire for what they are able to do, are basically in the same situation as the boy sticking his thumb in the dam trying to stop the flood.

He's against them for the same reason the rest of the law enforcement community doesn't welcome them: They aren't trained for the job.

I don't know if you've ever volunteered with or worked with the police or fire departments OR the military, but you really don't want untrained volunteers running into situations, no matter how well they think they are armed or whatever.

These law enforcement (LEO) units have a lot of policies and procedures that they follow in order to make sure they get a good conviction rate and that they're arresting ONLY the felons and not everything that moves. The militia haven't had this training.

LEOs have backup procedures and other tactical procedures they follow to deploy. Instead of that, yuou've got a bunch of civilians who haven't been informed of any of the policies, running around the desert (it's a dangerous place. I'm a Texan, we do tripes into the desert for rock art, and it can be VERY dangerous so we take adequate precautions.)

And now they're interfering by calling in all sorts of sightings and tripping off alarms. They're undoubtedly stomping all over the drag roads as well (they clear the dirt roads of footprints so they can see if someone's gone across. This is one way that they track where groups are going.)

It's like letting a bunch of five year olds out in the middle of a military training exercise. The real guys have tos pend more time trying to deal with the 5 year olds (the Minutemen) and are pulled away from their real jobs.

Did you notice that the capture rate has gone down since the Border Patrol's had to deal with the Minutemen?

If they want to do good, let them go home and work with their own police departments and do citizen patrols in coordination with the LEOs. That would do a thousand times more good than playing cowboy in the dangerous Arizona desert.

Did you notice that the capture rate has gone down since the Border Patrol's had to deal with the Minutemen?

If they want to do good, let them go home and work with their own police departments and do citizen patrols in coordination with the LEOs. That would do a thousand times more good than playing cowboy in the dangerous Arizona desert.

Agreed, The minutemen should receive some type of training so that they can ingrate thier efforts with the BP. That is the same thing as the various LEO assistant programs such as Neighborhood Crime Watch etc. In the past the US has relied on it's civilian population to assist in these types of jobs. Please remember the Lvarious aides that every town had back in WW1 and WW2 such as the emergency response officials, as well as the "spotters" that were in place along the coastline watching for enemy aircraft and ships.

As for the capture rate decline, the BP have stated that there are a couple of reason for this.
1) The presence of the minutement themselves.
2) Mexican officials telling the imigrants to either go to another point or wait a month until the minutemen leave.
3) Mexican operations that are taking place just south of the border.

Originally posted by Byrd
I don't know if you've ever volunteered with or worked with the police or fire departments OR the military, but you really don't want untrained volunteers running into situations, no matter how well they think they are armed or whatever.

Correct, you don't want a horde of rednecks wearing greasy tanktops and flip-flops taking potshots at Mexicans from their lawnchairs.

And their husbands are even worse! *rimshot*

Peace

[edit on 5-4-2005 by Dr Love]

You people need to look at the entire picture here.

Congress approved a load of money for the BP, enough to put 2000 more of them on the border. Do you get this; they wanted to put TRAINED people on the border, since y'all claim this is all about the lack of training. For your info, these people are stopping upwards of 3000 illegals per day, and that's in ONE portion that they're patrolling!

You know what Bush's response to Congress was? He decided NOT to put 2000 more BP on the border and did something else with the money! So, your argument that they aren't qualified for the job is pointless, because steps were made to put trained people on the border.

And as for Bush not wanting to piss off the Latinos and lose the vote, guess what, HE'S DONE!! This is his 2nd term, people. Why does he care about the vote? Another lame excuse.

Too bad, you people will only understand when the illegals have all the jobs. Oh, wait, you can see that happening now...

He's afraid they will discover the bush family drug runners coming in from Mexico. The old man and the CIA have doing it for years.

Originally posted by Byrd
He's against them for the same reason the rest of the law enforcement community doesn't welcome them: They aren't trained for the job.

I don't know if you've ever volunteered with or worked with the police or fire departments OR the military, but you really don't want untrained volunteers running into situations, no matter how well they think they are armed or whatever.

These law enforcement (LEO) units have a lot of policies and procedures that they follow in order to make sure they get a good conviction rate and that they're arresting ONLY the felons and not everything that moves. The militia haven't had this training.

LEOs have backup procedures and other tactical procedures they follow to deploy. Instead of that, yuou've got a bunch of civilians who haven't been informed of any of the policies, running around the desert (it's a dangerous place. I'm a Texan, we do tripes into the desert for rock art, and it can be VERY dangerous so we take adequate precautions.)

And now they're interfering by calling in all sorts of sightings and tripping off alarms. They're undoubtedly stomping all over the drag roads as well (they clear the dirt roads of footprints so they can see if someone's gone across. This is one way that they track where groups are going.)

It's like letting a bunch of five year olds out in the middle of a military training exercise. The real guys have tos pend more time trying to deal with the 5 year olds (the Minutemen) and are pulled away from their real jobs.

Did you notice that the capture rate has gone down since the Border Patrol's had to deal with the Minutemen?

If they want to do good, let them go home and work with their own police departments and do citizen patrols in coordination with the LEOs. That would do a thousand times more good than playing cowboy in the dangerous Arizona desert.

Alot of that makes sense and I can see where the border patrol is coming from by having to deal with the "minute men", but I agree that something needs to be done. The government isn't serious about it. The border patrol just isn't getting the job done. I think that the minute men project is sort of a publicity stunt to some degree. If they cause alittle ruckus and get some media attention which they are, then maybe the government will be forced to take it more seriously. I think the national guard should get involved. This needs to be fixed and I support the minute men because I think it will cause enough noise to get some more support and make it an issue to gain votes. Hopefully it will get more attention and people get serious about it.

Originally posted by truthseeka
Too bad, you people will only understand when the illegals have all the jobs. Oh, wait, you can see that happening now

Illegals don't have any jobs that anyone I know is actively trying to compete for. Perhaps in arizona and texas they fill more store clerk roles but this is hardly a pressing issue. The only issue vis a vis border security is preventing terrorists and gangs from crossing it and bringing bombs and drugs.

Lord Altmis nailed it in the third post: illegal immigrants are good for business because they lower wages at the bottom end of the employment market, thus saving businesses money, even if they don't directly hire illegals.

I'm sure a lot of Bush's supporters are mystified by this, but they shouldn't be, big money is Bush's real constituency, xenophobia and terror alarmism are just tools to keep Bush and the economic elites he represents in charge.