The Nevada Sagebrush

Jim Gilchrist speaks at the ASUN Immigration Forum Thursday. Photo by Casey Durkin/Nevada Sagerbrush.

To a crowd of about 250 people, two panelists calmly spoke, and often agreed, about their positions on immigration reform. A few buildings to the south, 150 people gathered for another panel discussion on many of the same topics held in protest of the first.

The invitation of one of the speakers at the Immigration Forum, Jim Gilchrist, was the subject of a weeklong controversy that culminated in the planning of the smaller forum.

In a letter to university leaders and the Associated Students of the University of Nevada, who organized the event, Emma Sepulveda Pulvirenti, a professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, demanded Gilchrist’s invitation be revoked because of what Sepulveda called “hate speech.”

After leaders, including UNR President Milton Glick refused to prevent Gilchrist from speaking, Sepulveda and others planned another immigration discussion to be held at the same time as an alternative.

To most who attended the forum where Gilchrist spoke, hate speech was markedly absent from anything he said. Most of his comments centered around what he called the “rule of law” and politician’s lack of support for enforcing them.

“Our founding fathers did not realize our country would be governed by a bunch of cavalier, weak-kneed political governors who wouldn’t enforce the rule of law,” he said. “If we do not enforce laws, what’s the point of having them?”

Gilchrist also focused many of his comments on advocating for the United States to provide aid to the Mexican government and President Felipe Calderón in fighting drug cartels and corruption to improve what he called a situation that forces immigrants over the border into the U.S.

“We should help them create in their country what we have in ours,” he said.

At one point in the forum, Glichrist called illegal immigration into the U.S. a “21st century slave trade” after being asked how the American economy can sustain itself without labor from illegal immigrants.

“If you hate union labor and want to employ cheap, underpaid workers, it’s OK,” he said. “You lure workers here from Third World countries, you don’t drag them here with chains. If they get testy you fire them and they have nowhere to go.”

Miguel Angel Acosta, an immigrants’ rights activist who was also on the immigration panel, differed from Gilchrist on a number of points, but not all. At one point when asked if he’d like to rebut a statement Gilchrist made, Acosta responded that many of their comments were very similar.

“I don’t know who he is or what he’s done with Jim Gilchrist,” he said with a smile, drawing chuckles from the crowd.

Across campus, the second immigration forum focused on most of the same issues, though with one addition: hate speech and their opposition to it.

“I don’t waste my comments with people who can’t hold a humane conversation. I can’t have a debate with (Gilchrist),” Sepulveda said at the event. “What is he going to tell me, that we are criminals?”

Nevada Sagebrush reporters Gabrielle Irvin and Aaron Benedetti contributed reporting to this story. Jay Balagna can be reached at jbalagna@nevadasagebrush.com.

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