Crossing the line?

Monday, Dec. 5, 2005 | 8:10 a.m.

Hundreds of local residents sit in cushioned chairs at monthly meetings at convention centers, downtown casinos and Elks' lodges, listening to guest speakers recite scary statistics about millions of people, mostly Mexicans, crossing the border.

At some of the meetings, people in the audience cry out for a civil war if nothing is done to stop illegal immigration soon.

The same theme inspired a downtown Las Vegas billboard that was the subject of controversy earlier this year. With arrows pointing from Mexico to the United States, it drew dozens to protest in the street below and even anonymous arson threats leveled at a business located below the sign.

Such scenes increasingly are part of the panorama in the Las Vegas Valley, as several groups have formed locally or arrived from elsewhere to confront what their members see as the most severe threat ever leveled at the United States: illegal immigration.

Mark Edwards, founder of Wake Up America -- one of the local groups, whose message is broadcast on a radio program and who plans to hold its second annual national convention on the issue next spring -- said Las Vegas is home to a grass-roots movement that is spreading across the nation.

He sees the movement as responsible for making leaders face the issue -- including President Bush's speech last week on his proposal to allow foreign workers to stay in the country for a few years at a time.

"I feel our grass-roots movement -- including us in Las Vegas -- have caused more interest in what's going on and people are saying, 'You better start talking about this,' " Edwards said.

Experts say the phenomenon will grow as the local immigrant population grows, and some fear with it will come increased divides along racial and ethnic lines.

"It seems that Las Vegas is one of the coming hotbeds" for anti-illegal immigration groups, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Nevada Poverty Law Center, an organization that tracks discrimination.

The anti-immigration groups "represent what will become a genuine social movement, and Nevadans need to be concerned, because they have an incredible tendency to demonize, with strong streaks of bigotry," he said.

But members of the groups insist they are not racist or otherwise prejudiced. They contend they are simply seeking to strengthen the rule of law against the tide of illegal immigration, both locally and nationally.

Maria Cristina Morales, an assistant professor of sociology at UNLV who studies immigration, said recent events in the valley are "really just the beginning." The key role immigrants play in the region's population growth is the motor driving people to groups dealing with the issue, she said.

"With the growth of the immigrant community comes the perception of threat," she said.

Clark County's Hispanic population more than doubled from 11.2 percent in 1990 to an estimated 25 percent today, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. About 70 percent of immigrants to Southern Nevada come from Mexico.

Nobody knows how many undocumented, or illegal, immigrants are in the valley, but estimates range as high as 150,000.

"It (immigration) is seen as an economic threat, in that they are supposedly taking away jobs; a security threat -- especially since 9/11; and a cultural one, because people fear they will not assimilate or adapt," Morales said.

"The way it has happened elsewhere, when numbers are low, immigrants are not a threat. But in Las Vegas, the way (population) numbers are going ..."

Perhaps one of the most visible anti-illegal immigration groups at the start of this year was the National Vanguard (formerly called the National Alliance), which paid for the billboard on Sahara Avenue that said: "Stop Immigration: Join the National Alliance." The billboard was removed twice because of controversy over its message and the group behind it. The group also formed a political party called the White People's Party.

Then there's Wake Up America. Edwards' radio show, broadcast on KDWN 720-AM, is devoted to the subject of immigration. The group also has been drawing about 250 to monthly meetings since the beginning of the year, Edwards said.

Another group, Secured Borders, trumpets its message with dozens of signs on bus benches around town.

And the Minuteman Project drew international media coverage to an event last spring that was part protest and part volunteer border patrol. During April, hundreds of volunteers "manned" the Arizona-Mexico border. Nevada sent 33 volunteers, according to the project's Web site.

Edwards said Sunday that his group recently has helped form a local Minuteman group, with "about 150 guys."

"We pick up about 30 more at each gun show," he added, noting that membership includes former law enforcement officers and military veterans.

Two were on the border last weekend with a half-dozen members from other Minuteman groups in the region, he said, with "night vision and all that ... helping the Border Patrol catch people."

At one of Wake Up America's monthly meetings earlier this year, invited speaker Frosty Wooldridge's talk -- and the audience's response -- offered a view of the anti-illegal immigration movement.

Wooldridge -- who wrote a book called "Immigration's Unarmed Invasion" --- began by telling the roughly 150 people gathered at the Las Vegas Club casino, "This country is under the greatest threat in its 219-year history."

"If we don't get it handled, we're going to go the way of the Roman Empire," he added.

Wooldridge, who introduced himself as the son of "a 27-year Marine," laced his talk with bravado.

"This is our yard," he said. "We will bark, we will bite. We will be relentless until we drive the invaders out."

He proceeded to list a series of problems that illegal immigrants bring to U.S. soil, including a "disease Jihad," a rise in gangs, a loss of jobs and higher costs for services such as education and health care.

If their numbers continue, he warned, "in 60 years, we will have to flush the toilet once a week and take a shower once a month" due to a shortage of resources.

At this, members of the audience shook their heads.

The solution, Wooldridge said, is a five- or 10-year moratorium on all immigration, "locking up all corporate heads" who hire undocumented immigrants, militarizing the border and a "slow, steady repatriation of 20 million aliens back to their countries."

That brought down the house.

As the applause died down, he said: "I don't want to see my country taken over ... and have them make the Southwest a slime pit Third World country like Mexico."

After Wooldridge spoke, audience member Jill Nicholson raised her hand and said, "Look around -- it's 99 percent white people.

"Why aren't black leaders doing something about this? Everybody's calling us racists and it's not true."

Edwards, founder of the group, told a story after the meeting about when he was in the Marines as a young man and blacks began fighting side by side with whites.

At 74, he said he remembers seeing black people separated from white people when he was growing up and always was disturbed by it. His group, he said, is not racist, and neither are most others in the movement to curb immigration.

Since the meeting where Wooldridge spoke, blacks have begun attending the group's gatherings, he said.

But Potok said such statements are politically motivated.

"These groups have to say they're not racists -- if they don't, it would destroy their movement," he said.

The comments of Wooldridge and other activists offer a clearer view of the movement, Potok said.

"They use the language of demonization -- it's one thing to talk about needed changes in immigration policy, and it's another to target groups of people or the immigrants themselves," he said.

Dean Ishman, president of the NAACP's Las Vegas chapter, said he does not trust most anti-immigration groups, even though he may agree with part of their message. He does not support illegal immigration, for example, and thinks the immigration system should be reformed.

But Ishman said he realizes that "Some people within those groups have negative, derogatory reasons for doing what they're doing -- certainly when it comes to people of color.

"As soon as they succeed in demonizing Hispanics, who's next?" he asked.

At the close of another meeting, this one of the Secured Borders group, a sort of gripe session unfolded, offering a look at how immigrants in the valley make some local residents feel.

On a weekday evening, about 25 people sat in a small room at a Las Vegas Elks' Lodge. A map of the valley stood propped up at a table in the room's entrance, with pins sticking out of locations where the group had placed about 65 posters on bus benches.

Secured Borders Director Lawrence Pappas laid out a theory that several members of anti-illegal immigration groups repeated.

It goes something like this: the casinos of Las Vegas and the Culinary Union do not check health cards and other identification well enough, so the Strip must be full of illegal immigrants.

This leads to potential health threats, because illegal immigrants come in the United States without being checked for diseases, he said.

"If they can get fraudulent health cards, then I wouldn't trust any of those hotels -- all they have to do is cough on your food," Pappas said.

But Pilar Weiss, political director of the Culinary Union, said in an interview that the "idea that we would be encouraging illegal immigration and ... false documents is ludicrous."

"The gaming industry is the most regulated in Nevada and perhaps one of the most regulated in the country -- these charges are absolutely untrue," Weiss said.

After Pappas spoke, somebody mentioned a corner on Eastern Avenue where day laborers gather to seek work from people who shop at two plant nurseries in the area.

"There's hundreds of 'em. Can't they be arrested for loitering?" one person asked.

From across the room, Cathie Profant brought up another issue.

"Whose idea is it to put the Spanish language in our face every time we turn around?" she said.

That appeared to resonate with the rest of the room, drawing a series of complaints about signs in North Las Vegas, telemarketers "with accents" and voting ballots in Spanish.

Pappas closed the meeting by saying: "We have to keep going after them and exposing them."

At meetings, on Web sites and on the radio, local residents concerned about immigration are encouraged to be activists.

Some of the ideas being pitched concern immigration experts, who say they encourage taking the law into one's own hands and may end up dividing the community.

Secured Borders has as its central project a petition against illegal immigration and in favor of strengthening borders.

The organization's Web site said Sunday that it had collected more than 8.1 million "signed and notarized" copies of the petition.

There is no way to confirm this claim, because Pappas claims the petitions are stored at "a secure location" that cannot be revealed because someone against the group's message could destroy them.

Apart from collecting signatures, Pappas' group takes photos of day laborers waiting for work and is mounting an investigation into the Culinary Union and its membership policies and practices, he said.

"We're in the process of documenting a lot of things because we know this isn't going to be solved today," he said.

Wake Up America's Web site has invited community members to "be a watcher," and also targets day laborers.

Potok said day laborers, because they are "very visible," tend to be a lighting rod for anti-illegal immigration groups.

Peter Ashman, chairman of the Las Vegas chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, opposes this kind of activism.

"I always worry about people taking the law into their own hands when they think public institutions are failing them," he said.

"Are they entirely comfortable with the notion that they can determine who's illegal and who's not?"

Ashman said he also is "concerned about (the) racial intolerance" that may result from one group targeting another.

He said the spread of such attitudes and actions could lead to hate crimes, or, at least raised tensions in the valley.

Sociologist Morales said community life in the valley will inevitably be affected by the spread of groups against illegal immigration.

"Members of these groups are a part of our neighborhoods and the workforce," she said.

"(The) perceptions (the groups have) will begin to affect how they treat the people they perceive as immigrants. This could then lead to discrimination.

"It's going to create an environment that is difficult for immigrants to live in."

Timothy Pratt can be reached at 259-8828 or at timothy@lasvegassun.com.