Beware of the bygones

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With the presidential campaigns congealing into solidarity camps, the air is clearing over old issues. For instance, Hillary and Barack were in Unity, N.H., with only complimentary things to say about each other.Republicans are a bit less disciplined and have trouble getting in sync. John McCain has a Herculean job ahead to quiet down the entrenched, unreformed ideological and religious rascals in his party. For now, he is avoiding giving all of them the heave-ho and is making compromises. That means the Republican jacket of damage to public finance, government procurement, constitutional law, and truth telling will hang on McCain.But entrenched wrong-headedness can be difficult to dispatch. For instance, Jim Gilchrist, co-founder of the Minuteman Project, told The Orange County Register, "I very well may have been fighting for people with less character and less integrity than the 'open border fanatics' I have been fighting against," he said.He was referring to the hate and gun-totin' groups who have infiltrated the movement he co-founded in 2005.He told reporter Amy Taxin, "I am very, very sad, very disappointed."Gilchrist's candor today may come as a surprise but a little late. I first saw Jim Gilchrist on the Capitol Mall in Washington, D.C. in 2006. He was there rallying a crowd of about 50 militants and drawing press attention. He and others were bothered when a Nazi group in uniform, shouting "Sieg Heil," paraded up but were shown to a place across the street to keep them from taking over the Minuteman event.In a way, Gilchrist succeeded in demonizing economic migrants. He got the general public to swallow the gag that terrorists, by mixing with the job seekers, sought to walk across the desert border to get to their targets.Clearly the public didn't buy it because in the 2006 mid-term elections, 30 representatives and six senators, all but one of whom had supported HB4437 (the Sensenbrenner bill) were thrown out of office. That unsuccessful legislation sought to make felons out of all men, women and children who were unauthorized to be in the country.For a century before 9/11, the ebb and flow of informal border crossings occurred with the ups and downs of the economy. After 2001, a garrison mentality took hold. It gave comfort to those with a survivalist and militia bent.Two U.S. Senate immigration reform bills (one co-sponsored by McCain) had a chance, but real possibilities were defeated after the Minuteman Project and others like it frightened people into believing migrant laborers posed a menace and that the road to legalization was appeasement. Congress was flooded with phone calls and email messages, giving the impression the public did not want reform, when the opposite was true.Instead, legislatures and municipal leaders began openly discriminating by proposing ways migrants could be denied housing or prohibited from soliciting jobs, applying for drivers' licenses or attending school. Many "patriots" felt they had to take matters into their own hands because government was "broken." That's what scare groups promote.So if you want to know why we lack immigration reform, have an undisciplined immigration policy and Homeland Security chases minimum-wage workers instead of capturing whoever was responsible for the anthrax attack that killed five people and infected 17, Gilchrist and his cohorts share a lot of that responsibility.Before long, most of us will forget what the beef was all about. Our attention will get diverted to common complaints about $4.50 gas, endless war, security, mortgages, health care, education, jobs and free trade.For the moment everybody is flocking to opposite ends of the national swimming pool and making nice with their own group -- even though there's an occasional water fight.We ought to keep in mind that agitators like Gilchrist bring sharks to the pool party with them.(Josi de la Isla writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service. He is author of The Rise of Hispanic Political Power (Archer Books). Email joseisla3(at)yahoo.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)