The Minutemen, who patrol the Mexican border to track illegal immigrants, are moving into urban areas - with Irish illegals in their sights, writes Seán O'Driscoll in New York.
Ronald Lewandowski is a large man with a grey beard and a loud, hearty chuckle. "People say I'm like Santa Claus," he says, as he loads up his video camera. Out in the Hamptons, summer retreat of New York's ultra rich, Lewandowski does not carry the affected casualness of the sailing crowd currently sanding off their boats in the nearby harbour. He is, he admits, "an angry, angry man".
While many white middle-aged men are spending their Hamptons summer evening barbecuing and golfing, Lewandowski is parked outside local 7/11 convenience stores to videotape "the invasion" of young immigrants, mostly from Mexico and Guatemala, who line up every day hoping to be picked for a day's construction work in one of the world's most affluent neighbourhoods.
"I have one tape of a US diplomat picking these guys up to work on his home, another of a prominent doctor doing the same thing. If one of these illegal immigrants even spits wrong, I pass it on to immigration and the police," he says. He also videotapes immigrants' houses, claiming that 62 Latino construction workers live in one nearby home.
Lewandowski was so incensed he set up the local chapter of the Minutemen, a group formerly known for armed patrols of the Mexican border and their fiery, anti-immigrant rhetoric. With almost nightly media reports of mass rallies across the country in favour of legal status for the US's estimated 12 million illegals, the Minutemen have soared in prominence and have suddenly gone middle class.
"People see that we're not a bunch of rednecks or skinheads and that we're the ones making sense," says New York leader, Peter Lanteri. "Every time there's Hispanics on TV waving Mexican flags in our country, I get calls all over New York asking us to do something."
His group is currently setting up branches across Long Island and, crucially, in Buffalo and other New York towns near the Canadian border, which they plan to patrol as vigilantly as the one with Mexico. The Minutemen have also launched a national tour this week to gather members across the US.
In the Hamptons, Lewandowski's group is concerned about illegal Irish in Montauk, a summer retreat that, pre-Celtic Tiger and pre-9/11, attracted thousands of Irish students each year. Some of them stayed on illegally, setting up their own businesses in Montauk and the Hamptons.
"The Irish come here, too, and don't go back. And now they own businesses in Montauk. The simple fact is, what part of illegal don't they understand?" Lewandowski told the New York Times last week.
Talking to The Irish Times, he admits only that two of his supporters have been gathering videotape information in Montauk. "It's like a police investigation. You don't talk about it while you are gathering information. It's only when we are ready that you reveal what you've got," he said. "A lot of the Irish go home but the ones that stay, I don't like them because this is a country of laws and they are breaking the law," he adds. "How would you like it in Ireland if they had millions of illegal workers coming into your country? You would absolutely freak out."
He pauses for a moment, explaining that many of the new Minutemen are Irish Americans and that one of his favourite politicians is Irish expert Republican Congressman Peter King, who co-sponsored a bill that would make illegal immigration an aggravated felony.
"The Irish," adds Lewandowski quickly, "are here to work. If some stay over, that's not the biggest problem. They're not the ones destroying American culture, they're not over here trying to change the words of our national anthem into Spanish, they're not breaking into people's houses when they're away."
According to east Hampton architect Amado Ortiz, anti-Irish prejudice has only weakened because the number of Irish coming to Montauk has gone down.
"All through the 1990s, there was a real nasty anti-Irish prejudice in the Hamptons," he said. "There were all the stereotypes that they wasted their money, they drank too much, they were looking for trouble. Its origins are very deeply rooted in American society."
Ortiz, whose father emigrated from Puerto Rico in the 1940s, was a speaker at a recent meeting organised by the Hamptons League of Women Voters to discuss setting up a day labourer centre to deal with the influx of Hispanic migrant workers.
"Everything was going well until the Minutemen showed up. They were shouting us down; they were using very coarse, vulgar language. They had a sign saying: 'Stop the Invasion', the usual stuff."
HE SEES THE Minutemen as a lower middle-class phenomenon, the very people who would be worst affected if the immigrants were to go home.
"You have a serious demographic change in the Hamptons," he said. "When I first came here 20 years ago, there were a lot of middle-class people but they are really being bought out by enormously wealthy people. The cost of living is getting crazy and immigrants are the only ones keeping the costs down." Nevertheless, the publicity caused by the anti-immigrant movement is having a big effect.
According to a local East Hamptons newspaper, police recently parked outside a local convenience store known as a pick-up for Latino day labourers, ostentatiously taking the numbers of employers' number plates.
"The Minutemen are small in number but, there is no doubt, they have the majority support out here," Ortiz said. "The Hamptons is a very, very conservative place. The lawns are perfectly manicured, the villages go to enormous lengths to ensure that everyone's house is kept in order. So it's like people's IQ drops 100 points when they see a group of Latino guys hanging around outside a store. I just can't reason with them."
In Montauk, the anti-immigration movement even has tacit support among some native Irish, who would like a special deal for the illegal Irish but deeply resent the Latino migrants.
In O'Murphy's Irish bar on Wednesday night this week, the topic is producing lively debate.
Chris, from Newmarket, Co Clare, believes that the Latino influx has led to a serious increase in crime and believes that Mexicans should not be provoking Americans by waving Mexicans flags during pro-immigration rallies.
"I'd love to see the Irish stay here but what you do for one you have to do for all. But then we have the Mexicans going around protesting with Mexican flags. They can go home if they're going to do that," he says.
Barwoman Caroline Burleson from Tallaght in Dublin is much more sympathetic to illegal immigrants and wants to see the passing of the McCain-Kennedy Bill, which would eventually provide green cards to millions of illegal immigrants.
"I used to be illegal myself until I married an American. I got my green card last October," she says. "Legalisation would bring all the Irish back into Montauk because the numbers are down. There are some illegal Irish in Montauk as well, as I'd want to see it passed for their sake."
As I leave the Hamptons, I am haunted by the image of Ronald Lewandowski, a bright, articulate man who is out at night videotaping illegal immigrants when he could be at home with his family enjoying the Hamptons life that most New Yorkers, living in cramped apartments, can only dream about.
"I don't have a family," he says strongly. "I couldn't afford it because I have to pay taxes for every damn immigrant kid that comes out of hospital. I don't have my own family. That's what this is all about."
The Minutemen: outraged citizens or vigilantes?
The Minuteman Project was started in April 2005 by right-wing Americans outraged by illegal immigration. Members are mostly known for their angry rhetoric and voluntary patrols of the Mexican border. They are often heavily armed but say they carry guns only for their own protection and now only report illegal immigrants to the authorities, after their "citizen's arrests" of undocumented immigrants were found to be illegal. The group claims it is not racist but members frequently speak of Hispanics as an attack on American culture and a deliberate "invasion" of the US.
As the group has grown in popularity, it has sought to distance itself from neo-Nazi and fascist elements within its ranks.
Its website carries a warning that no Mexican flags should be burned at Minutemen demonstrations.
With a nationwide Minutemen tour under way this week, the group's president, Chris Simcox, says he is hoping to shed its "tobacco-chewing, redneck" image and claims the silent support of the majority of Americans. However, President George Bush has labelled the group as "vigilantes". SO'D