The issue of illegal immigration has become a hot button topic for campaigns around the county, and though Nevada County is not a prime destination for any kind of immigrants, the call for stricter immigration enforcement resounds with many voters here, a reform advocate said Wednesday.

Chris Simcox, founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, accompanied Republican candidates Dan Logue and Tom McClintock at a lunch meeting in Nevada City.

Illegal immigration encourages abuse of immigrants at the hands of drug mafias increasingly involved in smuggling people, exposes immigrants to the threat of death in southwestern deserts, permits exploitation of workers by unscrupulous American business people, and lowers the wages of legal workers, Simcox said later in an interview at The Union.

"Our organization is misunderstood" by people who call it racist and anti-immigrant, Simcox said. "What we are doing is pro-immigrant. ... (Immigration) is not a civil rights issue. It's a rule of law issue. It's a national security issue."

Expansion of guest-worker programs, reform of the "broken" immigration bureaucracy, stepped-up border enforcement, and the location of more than 1 million people who entered the country legally but who have overstayed their visas since 2001 would be first steps in solving deeper issues linked to immigration, Simcox said.

Strict enforcement would create "a level playing field" for employers who already hire legal workers at a greater cost than illegal ones, he added.

Civil rights organizations have accused the Minuteman organization of stirring racist tensions.



To contact City Editor Trina Kleist, e-mail tkleist@theunion.com or call 477-4230.