Minutemen objective is shameful

The Minutemen are coming, and so far it looks like it's going to be an ugly sight.

The weekend after next, the citizen volunteer group famed for trying to catch migrants sneaking across America's southern border plans a new operation right here in Seattle. The target: local employers who hire illegal immigrants.

Check that. The target is employers who hire anyone who looks like an illegal immigrant.

The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps intends to set up shop at a popular day-laborer pickup spot in Seattle, such as the Home Depot south of Safeco Field. Anyone who hires the workers will be photographed, and the photos will be posted on the Web.

"The goal is to shame employers into hiring only legal workers," said Spencer Cohen, 36, a political consultant who is organizing the protest. "Americans are losing jobs to the illegal work force, and we want to bring attention to that."

I spoke to both Cohen and Tom Williams, of Deming, who is the "sector chief" of the state Minuteman group. Both have reasonable concerns about border security and how easy it is to sneak into America.

Sporadically since October, they have patrolled the Canadian border near Blaine, with a goal of helping U.S. border agents nab illegals. There has been zero result from this, good or bad.

But this latest idea of shaming employers who hire foreign-looking day laborers is so wrongheaded I can scarcely list all its moral and practical flaws in this space.

For starters, many day laborers are in this country legally. To assume that any who look Mexican are illegal is really the definition of racism. To try to whip up sentiment against an employer by posting such photos on the Internet smacks of McCarthyism.

The Web site where Cohen says he'll post the photos, www.operationshameonyou.org, is a virulent attack on the poor.

"We the people of the United States of America are fed up with day laborers who befoul our fair cities," it reads. "... Not only do they litter, they defecate and urinate anywhere they feel like, and sometimes right in view of the public.

"We can, by legal means, rid our cities of this nuisance."

Even if that were possible, it would likely "trigger a big, fat recession," says Mike Gempler of the Northwest Growers Association, a group of 500 farms.

He announced this week that Eastern Washington farms have 1,000 jobs paying a minimum of $9 an hour that they can't fill locally. So, using a federal guest-worker program, the farms are recruiting temporary laborers from ... Mexico.

"There are simply not enough legal residents or citizens in the U.S. to fill all the jobs in our economy," Gempler said. "Anti-immigration people are in deep denial about that."

The Minutemen say they're just trying to raise the alarm that our immigration system is broken.

"We're like a neighborhood-watch program, except our neighborhood is the entire country," Cohen said.

Some neighborhood. Our immigration system does need fixing, but demonizing any Hispanic looking for temp work is no way to start.

Danny Westneat's column appears Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.