Boy Scouts Try For Hispanic Recruitment With Hunt For Illegals

America's Voice Blog

Posted 06/30/09 at 02:58pm

Boyscouts Explorers Earlier this year, we reported that, in light of changing demographics, the Boy Scouts of America is spending more and more marketing dollars to recruit Latino youth, understanding that Latinos:

"[A]re projected to make up one quarter of the nation's population by 2050."

And this week TuscaloosaNews.com confirms that the organization is hoping to recruit more Hispanic members, even making the process easier by hiring bilingual recruiters and not requiring social security numbers or identification cards to join...

“The welcoming approach has resonated with immigrant parents”

The irony here is that a recent New York Times article reports that the same Boy Scouts of America is now training young scouts to hunt down and arrest "illegals"-- well, as a simulation, of course.

The article reports one of the program’s supporting officials as saying:

"This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl. It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.”

The program is supported by law enforcement officials who see participants as potential employees; the sponsoring law enforcement agency will usually have meetings during which the children hone what they term “law-enforcement techniques” in preparation for Explorer competitions, during which players (with their weapons) are expected to arrest others playing various forms of “illegals.”

The Boy Scouts new cowboys-and-illegals game sure sounds like a good outreach strategy to win over Latino youth, many of whom have been dying for the opportunity to hunt down illegal immigrants for years now. It takes a backseat perhaps only to the GOP Hispanic outreach strategy of making illegal immigration a wedge issue in the last few cycles.

Here's some advice for the Boy Scouts and the GOP when it comes to recruiting new members: it's not good practice to marginalize the very segment of the population you are hoping to recruit.

If you need evidence that this might be a bad strategy, new polling on immigration shows that 82% of Hispanics living in the US consider immigration to be an issue of "personal importance" to themselves or their family.