Don't you think we should ALL do this???

Question

August 22, 2006


RAMONA – Clint Hamilton says he'd rather be playing softball with his 10-year-old daughter.

Instead, the Ramona resident said “patriotic duty” pushes him to spend at least 20 hours a week trying to stop day laborers from gathering outside the downtown grocery store where he once shopped.



CHARLIE NEUMAN / Union-Tribune
Albertsons employee Brittney Perdew signs Ramona resident Clint Hamilton's petition to ban day laborers from the store's parking lot. Hamilton says he isn't interested in fighting illegal immigration, but rather fighting loitering.
A one-man Minuteman army, Hamilton videotapes and photographs people hiring workers and said he's been criticized and threatened.

“All I ask them to do is get out of our parking lot,” he said.

Hamilton, 44, speaks in calm tones and wears a U.S. Border Patrol baseball cap. “I'm basically a nice guy,” he said.

Outside a doughnut store in the shopping center, men gathered for coffee on a recent morning said they don't see Hamilton that way.

“He's just racist,” said Antonio Murillo, 75, who buys a pastry and a cup of coffee and spends his mornings chatting with the workers, something he said he has done each morning for more than 15 years.

A retired plumber, Murillo said he feels targeted by Hamilton's cameras because Murillo is Latino. He's a legal U.S. resident, he said, pulling out his residency card. It's not true, as Hamilton contends, that the workers leer at women or urinate in the alley, Murillo said.


Day-labor division
Nationwide and throughout North County, day-labor sites like the one in Ramona have become the most visible staging ground of the illegal immigration debate. In Vista, a day-labor ordinance that requires would-be employers to register with the city is being contested in court.
But how such sites are viewed often depends on who is viewing them. Though he is loosely a member of the San Diego Minutemen, Hamilton prefers acting alone, he said.

He grew up near San Ysidro and served two years in the U.S. Army as a combat medic before returning to run his own construction-related business in San Diego. About 16 years ago he and his wife, Lynnette, bought a house on a one-acre lot in Ramona where they could keep their horses and raise a family, Hamilton said.

The growing number of Latinos looking for work outside his neighborhood Albertsons prompted him to shop elsewhere and begin his protest.

He isn't bothered by the men's legal status, he said.

“I don't like the way they make the street look. We have a beautiful little town in Ramona, and we don't need 100 loitering men,” Hamilton said.

For months, Hamilton has protested by himself at the hiring site. He started off carrying a sign that read “Hire a Patriot, Not an Illegal.”

He and the day laborers both said they yell at each other in the parking lot.

Hamilton sends videotapes and photographs he takes of landscapers, homeowners and other employers picking up the day laborers to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Answer 1

BRAVO!!! i've said it once and i'll keep saying it, i'm willing to pay $1 more for my fruit if it means getting these ILLEGALS out of our country. i have no gripe with those who come the US legally. Bless you all, welcome and just stay productive. it's these ILLEGALS that we need to dime out and run out of our country. seriously, we need to change the laws. ILLEGALS should not be eligible for ANY services, unless they pay for it. NO welfare, no medical, no schooling. NOTHING. you're illegal and you give birth, your child ISN'T a US citizen. Citizenship for only those that are LEGALLY here and US citizens. Come on, aren't we fed up with these ILLEGALS creeping in and taking over?

Answer 2

I find that immigrants that are out trying to get day labor every day a little bit better than the americans who stay at home sleep until noon watch television all day and collect unemployment and welfare. Those are the people that raise your taxes. Besides they arn't physically or verbally hurting anybody. If an american is mad that they get jobs like that why don't they go in the crowds and look for job, they might stand out and get a job and stop getting money from the government for sitting at home all day.

Answer 3

I think he is doing the right thing, I used to work next to a gas station, and when I got out for lunch their were a lot of guys outside looking for a job, they're just outside looking at the women and saying offensive words to them, some of them we even drinking. I think they should get out of the street and go and find a decent job. I used to be a teller at a check cashing store, thy were a lot of guys that got a check that didn't even had any funds, they even work for a week without getting any money. But that's what they get.

Answer 4

those "sin taxes" by no skill fairly artwork. they're only a populist and accessible way for governments to enhance taxes on the most disempowered human beings in society. it really is more desirable person-pleasant than elevating taxes on individuals of industries with lobbying skill. If the authorities fairly cared about our lengthy time period well being, and the fee of well being expenditure previous the time period of their own authorities, they could arise with more desirable helpful suggestions. i might want to need to make certain more desirable authorities funded community gardens encouraging human beings to devour healthful nutrition. which will be a sensible "artwork for the dole" project.

Answer 5

I think it's a sad story because he calls ICE and they do nothing, it's all a lie, they have orders from the top to do nothing, if they were doing their job the day laborers would not be their at all. here is what they think of us.

http://www.daylaborers.org/

Answer 6

Ummm, no. How does he know that the people are illegal? Is he completing his own background checks or is he just going around taking pics of people who have tan skin?

Answer 7

Hamilton for president

Answer 8

Well I admire his gusto......BUT......perhaps he could take an hour or so TO PLAY with his daughter as well. Our children are our future.

Imagine his results......if he donated those 20 hours a week at the local Boys and Girls club or Teen shelter.

BUT you have to admire ANYONE who stands up for their beliefs.

Answer 9

impersonating an officer, or going vigilante is not the answer.... the answer is to approve a comprehensive immigration bill and enforce it. Just remember, it was the GOP republican machine that voted NO on the last one, even after they edited and modified it themselves.... so yo owe it to the GOP that they are still in your parking lot.

Answer 10

Well, it shows what one person can do, in peaceful and civic-minded fashion...what remains to be seen is if EVERYONE else will pick up on the idea of NOT hiring illegals.