← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Lewis Wetzel
Thread ID: 7553 | Posts: 5 | Started: 2003-06-23
2003-06-23 00:27 | User Profile
Personally, I'd like to stake the "Reverend" out in this same desert with nothing but some honey and an ant's nest to keep him company.
[url=http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030620-121413-7448r]http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=200306...20-121413-7448r[/url]
Feature: Serving Christ in the borderlands By Steve Sailer UPI National Correspondent Published 6/20/2003 2:45 PM View printer-friendly version
TUCSON, Ariz., June 20 (UPI) -- "I'm a Christian by choice, an American by accident of birth," the Rev. Robin Hoover declared while he lunched on a big box of Cheese Nips in his Tucson office where he runs Humane Borders, a charity that maintains 38 water tanks in the southern Arizona desert to prevent illegal border-crossers from dying of thirst.
A Disciples of Christ minister with a West Texas drawl and a political science doctorate, Hoover strongly defended putting Christian charity ahead of the rule of law in dealing with illegal migrants from Mexico.
"If Jesus Christ was here, he would welcome the stranger and offer hospitality. Father Abraham entertained angels unawares. Abraham was a migrant. Jesus was a refugee. Muslims hark back to the law of the wadi, of the hospitality of the oasis. Hospitality means life in southern Arizona," Hoover said.
Did Hoover feel he was encouraging law-breaking by making it safer to illegally enter America from Mexico?
"It's immoral to use the desert as part of a deterrent system," he argued.
Whether the desert is seen by potential immigrants as a deterrent is questionable since thousands enter the United States there. But the desert does take a toll: The U.S. Border Patrol reported that 145 people died in fiscal year 2002 while unlawfully entering Arizona.
Hoover, a powerfully built 50-year-old with a well-trimmed white beard, pointed out that illegal immigrants don't face many legal deterrents.
"The law that they are talking about is Entry Without Inspection," he said. "Non-prosecutable, non-fineable, you get your fingerprints, you get your Happy Meal, you get your trip back to Mexico. It's not much of a law; it's an administrative violation and not a crime under the U.S. statutes. It's not even a damn $2 parking ticket!"
Besides, he contended, "Migrants don't choose which corridor to follow based on whether or not water is there. They choose based on whether or not the Border Patrol has a high presence there."
We drove to the car repair shop where Hoover was having the springs beefed up on the smaller of Humane Borders' two trucks so that it could survive rough roads while carrying 200 gallons of water. We sat in his truck with the air conditioning running in the 103-degree heat.
Hoover wants a guest-worker program for migrants, with many safeguards for their rights. "To George W. Bush's credit, he understands migration better than any president who ever lived," Hoover stated.
"Are you going to vote for Bush?" I asked with a laugh.
"Don't go there," the minister warned. He's well aware that in a political environment where an odd coalition of big business, big labor and big religion favors mass immigration, it doesn't pay to emphasize his partisan affiliation.
I inquired what he thought of California anti-bilingual education activist Ron Unz's position. Unz defends mass immigration while calling for a return to aggressive assimilation. He wants public schools to once again aggressively Americanize immigrants the way they did before the rise of bilingual education and multiculturalism.
"That's a DWEB's view of the world -- Dead White European Bastards."
Hoover, though, isn't afraid to step on the toes of others on the left in his single-minded efforts to save the lives of illegal immigrants. For example, environmentalists had opposed his putting water tanks on the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge for fear they would attract migrants whose presence would harm the endangered Sonoran pronghorn antelope. But when 14 corpses of immigrants were found there in May 2001, Hoover persuaded the federal government. "They chose people over animals," he remarked with satisfaction.
Similarly, on April 27, Hoover published an op-ed article in the Arizona Daily Star criticizing a local American Indian nation, the Tohono O'Odham (formerly known as the Papago tribe), for not allowing water tanks on their Connecticut-sized reservation, where 85 illegal immigrants died during the previous fiscal year. Another of Tucson's leading liberal churches wrote a letter of protest to Humane Borders seemingly implying that it was virtually racist for a white man to say anything bad about American Indians.
The Tohono O'Odham leader, by the way, objected to having hundreds of thousands of trespassers crossing his people's ancestral land. So, he instead requested that the federal government secure their 76 miles of international border by erecting fences, lighting and surveillance devices.
Indeed, the Border Patrol had succeeded in cutting back on illegal immigrants roaming through San Diego neighborhoods by building big walls, which then pushed much of the alien smuggling business out into the Arizona desert. Hoover calls erecting fences and adding guards the "militarization" of the border and opposes it, arguing that America lacks the political will to close the border.
The next night was Humane Borders' weekly meeting at Hoover's First Christian Church near the University of Arizona campus. The volunteers were largely middle-class and middle-aged, as is true for most groups of public-spirited activists, no matter what their political views. These were people with long experience in church work and they knew how to keep inspired and organize the enthusiasts needed to drive 2,000 miles each week refilling the water tanks. "We're doing God's work and we're saving lives," exhorted Hoover.
Among the 20 in attendance, I counted 17 whites, two Latinos, and one American Indian. Most of the attendees belonged to Roman Catholic or mainstream liberal (but not evangelical) Protestant congregations, according to Doug Ruopp, one of the most active volunteers. "Not many Mexican churches are involved," Ruopp told me. "I guess they've got a lot on their plates."
Besides scheduling the water truck runs, the group discussed how to resell at a modest markup 40 pounds of shade-grown coffee from Chiapas, the southern Mexican state where an insurrection among the oppressed Mayan Indians had broken out in 1994 under the leadership of the glamorous white Marxist intellectual Subcommandante Marcos. "This keeps people there working at a living wage," Hoover said.
A good cause, but it was also easy to imagine how uncertain working-class Mexican-Americans might feel at such a meeting if they didn't yet fully understand the white upper-middle class's devotion to improving the world through conscientious consumption.
Some water truck drivers who had recently returned from near the border reported a new technological innovation by the Border Patrol -- custom built cherrypickers with glassed-in viewing stations that allowed agents to elevate themselves about 20 feet in the air. This news of stronger border enforcement was met with some indignation. "Bring your spray paint," said one woman with a tart laugh.
Early the next morning I joined Ruopp, a large, thoughtful man, for his rounds in the upgraded water truck.
"I love the desert and I can't stand the thought of people dying in it," he said as we bounced down a dirt road through the beautiful plains southwest of Tucson. Only a circling wake of vultures suggested there was anything potentially lethal about the tranquil landscape. We were almost in the shadow of Kitt Peak, where the National Observatory is perched, except that here there weren't many shadows to provide refuge from the intense late spring sun.
That's why Ruopp frequently gets up before dawn to refill the 65-gallon blue tanks, which are surmounted by 30-foot-tall poles flying blue pennants.
These tanks are located 40 miles north of the border because the Arizona-based partners of Mexican people smugglers are loath to try to pick up their customers near the frontier where the U.S. Border Patrol operates in force. So, the "coyotes" typically force their customers to walk north for one to three nights before they can expect to be picked up and spirited away to safe houses.
Most of the water tanks are on federal government land. While we were checking one tank that was surrounded by discarded plastic water bottles left by illegal immigrants, I told Ruopp that if I were a Border Patrol agent, I'd camp out next to his water tanks in order to make easy captures. "The understanding we have with the Border Patrol is that they won't sit on our stations any more than they would anywhere else," he replied.
Ruopp moved his family from Boston to Arizona four years ago. "Driving the water truck is an extension for me of the choice I made to teach in the South Tucson school district." That poor, mostly Hispanic enclave is looked down upon, both visually and socially, by the wealthy suburbs of north Tucson in the Catalina Foothills, where illegal immigrants are seen mostly tending lavish golf courses and working on spectacular Southwestern-style homes nestled among the saguaro cactus. "I've talked to people from the Catalina Foothills who have never even been down to South Tucson," observed Ruopp.
Although of Quaker upbringing himself, the 48-year-old became involved in the Latino-rights movement three decades ago when he met Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers union.
I reminded him that at that time the Hispanic hero despised illegal immigration -- even going so far as to offer his staffers to the Border Patrol as auxiliary border guards -- because undocumented workers served as scabs who broke his strikes. Ruopp readily admitted that the economics and politics of illegal immigration are complicated. "There's a section of the Mexican-American community who say about immigration, 'Enough is enough.'"
"It all depends," he reflected, "On whether you believe these newcomers will form a permanent underclass, or whether you believe they'll make it."
That morning, four more dead bodies were found in the desert. In the afternoon, thick black clouds gathered, and a massive out-of-season thunderstorm drenched the desert. By nightfall, most of the puddles had disappeared into the parched ground.
2003-06-23 00:37 | User Profile
*Originally posted by Lewis Wetzel@Jun 23 2003, 00:27 * ** "That's a DWEB's view of the world -- Dead White European Bastards."
**
I love it when traitors come right out and say things like this. Is anyone else making a list? When treason becomes illegal again, I'll have quite a long list of my own and I encourage others to do the same. If only to compare notes.
BTW, "Quaker upbringing" is probably not especially Christian in my experience. I knew Quakers helping GIs desert in the 60s and they were probably closer to being officially atheist than me. Quaker is less a religious than a social institution at this point, though I'll allow for idealism here and there.
2003-06-23 01:17 | User Profile
Originally posted by Lewis Wetzel@Jun 23 2003, 00:27 * ** Among the 20 in attendance, I counted 17 whites, two Latinos, and one American Indian. Most of the attendees belonged to Roman Catholic or mainstream liberal (but not evangelical)* Protestant congregations, according to Doug Ruopp, one of the most active volunteers. **
Can't blame Falwell for this Franco!
2003-06-23 09:12 | User Profile
While we were checking one tank that was surrounded by discarded plastic water bottles left by illegal immigrants, I told Ruopp that if I were a Border Patrol agent, I'd camp out next to his water tanks in order to make easy captures. "The understanding we have with the Border Patrol is that they won't sit on our stations any more than they would anywhere else," he replied.
How very cosy.
Maybe there are a few "concerned citizens" with rifles who can add an extra tap to all those water tanks. Cacti get thirsty too, you know.
2003-06-24 09:46 | User Profile
Hoover wants a guest-worker program for migrants, with many safeguards for their rights. "To George W. Bush's credit, he understands migration better than any president who ever lived,"** Hoover stated.
"Are you going to vote for Bush?" I asked with a laugh.
"Don't go there," the minister warned. He's well aware that in a political environment where an odd coalition of big business, big labor and big religion favors mass immigration, it doesn't pay to emphasize his partisan affiliation.
I inquired what he thought of California anti-bilingual education activist Ron Unz's position. Unz defends mass immigration while calling for a return to aggressive assimilation. He wants public schools to once again aggressively Americanize immigrants the way they did before the rise of bilingual education and multiculturalism.
"That's a DWEB's view of the world -- Dead White European Bastards."**