Houston leaders: 'No to Minutemen, yes to immigration reform'

02:05 PM CDT on Tuesday, July 12, 2005

By Reggie Aqui / 11 News

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The controversy over Minutemen volunteers coming to Houston has sparked a call by political and religious leaders for major immigration reform.

KHOU

The Minutemen are scheduled to come to Houston in October.

The Minutemen aren't scheduled to come to Houston until October, but leaders from the City of Houston, the Catholic Church and other groups aren't waiting to respond.

They launched a campaign Tuesday with the theme "No to Minutemen, Yes to Immigration Reform."

"Nobody can deny that our Country's immigration system is broken and needs to be fixed," said Fr. Paul English, Vicar for Hispanic Families at St. Anne Catholic Community. "We've got exploited workers, divided families, deaths in the desert, fake documents. And now an anti-immigrant militia group is coming to Houston to intimidate members of our community. We need a strong, united voice from local leadership to call for immediate action from Congress."

Catholic Archbishop Joseph A. Fiorenza, an interfaith coalition of Houston-area clergy, City Council Members Gordon Quan and Adrian Garcia and other City and County leaders attended the meeting.

The group is calling for immigration reform that meets the following principles:

• Creates a path to earned citizenship for the 10 million undocumented workers in the country

• Creates a guest worker program that protects the rights of workers and matches legal status with the needs of the labor market

• Allows for Family Reunification

• Returns border security and the rule of law to our country's immigration system.

"Houston is ground zero for our broken immigration system," said Rev. David Meeker-Williams, a Methodist pastor. "It should be our congressional leadership who take the lead in bringing about reform."

Until now, the so-called Minutemen Civil Defense Corps stuck to monitoring border crossings. But now the Minutemen are expanding their own borders and are set to arrive in Houston this fall.

They will be armed with cameras and have threatened to videotape the day laborers who congregate on so many area street corners.

Some, like Congressman John Culberson, will welcome them. He said the Minutemen are patriots. But the group won't get such a welcome from the Catholic Church.

"These are people who have left everything in their own country," said Father Paul English, St. Anne Catholic Church. "It’s often because there are just no opportunities for them. They come here to try to eek out a living day by day. And for someone to put that in danger, with no real purpose, there doesn't seem to be any kind plan they have, just to intimidate people. And it seems to me to be pretty unkind."

Congressman Culberson and other leaders meeting Tuesday do agree that something needs to be done in Congress to change immigration laws so that groups like the Minutemen aren't necessary.

The Metropolitan Organization also announced a new campaign called " Standing for Families" to sign up 50,000 voters for immigration reform