Jim Gilchrist - Minutemen: The Battle To Secure America's Borders

Minutemen: The Battle To Secure America's Borders

Minutemen is a book coauthored by Jim Gilchrist and Jerome R. Corsi. It was written in 2006 and addressed the illegal immigration issue in America. The book is 375 pages long and has twelve chapters. It also features a forward from Congressman Tom Tancredo.

The book tries to persuade readers that illegal immigration is a dangerous and costly problem that needs an immediate policy solution. Gilchrist and Corsi claim that there is a population of 30 million illegal immigrants in the United States. The preface states, “This is an invasion, not a visit by neighbors asking for a cup of sugar.”

The invasion theme is seen throughout the book. Gilchrist and Corsi repeatedly make the claim that it is not just workers and families that come across the border, but criminals who also enter the country illegally. The authors state that 10-20% of people that enter the country illegally are criminals, and 10% will become criminals once they arrive in the U.S.

Additionally, Gilchrist believes that the open borders would create a welfare state, due to his belief that many of the immigrants take advantage of social benefits in America. The authors say that the number of undereducated illegal immigrants could outnumber the middle class. They discuss “anchor babies”, which is the large population of children born on U.S. soil to illegal immigrants. Since they are born in the United States, then they are American citizens by default. When the anchor babies are twenty-one years old, then they are able to sponsor their parents in the citizenship process.

The book also provides information about the Minutemen Project. It says that the goal of the group is to provide awareness of the disregard by politicians of the “illegal immigration crisis” and to prove that the mere presence of a person at the border would deter illegal crossings. Frustrated by his organization being called vigilantes, Gilchrist says that if people want to correctly address them, then this is what they should call the Minutemen Project: “a law-abiding, multiethnic, law-enforcement advocacy group, in favor of the orderly queue of legal immigration and opposed to the perilous chaos of illegal immigration.”

Gilchrist and Corsi disapprove of the way that employers abuse illegal immigrants by paying them lower wages and denying them benefits. The book calls this the “twenty-first-century slave trade”. This undermines the wages that U.S. citizens earn.

Minutemen devotes a whole chapter to discuss the death of deputy David March. March was killed by an illegal immigrant involved in gang and drug activities during a routine traffic stop.