The Minutemen and Anti-immigration Attitudes in California

Frédérick Douzet
2009 European Journal of American Studies  
On April 1st 2005, Jim Gildchrist launched the Minutemen Project movement 1 , which was soon to ramify into dozens of small organizations and inspire thousands of volunteers who were ready to invest their time patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border in a largely vain attempt to stop illegal immigration to the United States. 2 This motley gung-ho crowd dressed in camouflage and carrying guns attracted worldwide attention and sarcastic comments from the media and President Bush himself, who publicly
more » ... led them "vigilantes". 3 Yet in the midst of heated debates over illegal immigration and comprehensive immigration reform, the minutemen offer an interesting window into anti-immigration sentiment in California. The variety of their motivations and origins echoes to the complexity and conflicting nature of views on immigration. Shortly after Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante had prematurely declared "hate politics" over in the Golden State in 1999, anti-immigration sentiment has been on the rise again. It has come back as a wedge issue in California politics in the mid-2000s. Given the circumstances, which are in many ways different from the 1990s, the question we must ask here is "why?" 2
doi:10.4000/ejas.7655 fatcat:7kkgudit5bclddbzrpuz7u3soi