Sizer grew up in Southern California. "Watching the whole process, I hear the same arguments here in Utah now that I heard 15-20 years ago in California."

He says these are arguments such as: We need the labor. We won't be able to eat in restaurants without illegal immigrants.

"The demand for people to come to this country. There are probably hundreds of millions of people who would like to come here," Sizer said. "People like my relatives, from a relatively wealthy nation such as Germany, want to come here."

Racism a factor?

At Tancredo's speech, a few audience members questioned his strict stand against illegal immigration.

However, the overwhelming majority in the audience, including Utah Valley State College students Jessica Atwood, 18, and Ray Palmer, 19, of Orem, didn't need to be persuaded.

"We need to protect America against pollution," Palmer told a reporter.

"Illegal immigrants," Atwood replied. "Same thing. Yeah."

The two were apparently joking. Atwood clarified that "America's full of multiculture. That's great. There's a difference between taking jobs Americans need and making a life here."

But to longtime civil rights activist Archie Archuleta, their words exemplified what he sees as "one great, big, ugly pollutant in this country. It is called racism and ethnocentrism."

He sees it as dehumanizing a group of people, most of whom have committed only one crime — crossing a border illegally.

"The dehumanizing element is used in much the same way the Germans used it against the Jews and the gypsies," said Archuleta, chairman of the Utah Coalition of La Raza. "If something is wrong with these people, then they're no longer human, then you can commit all sorts of atrocities against them."

The anti-immigrant movement, he says, isn't new, but now "it's more virulent, it's more widespread."

Civil rights groups, including the Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center, have reported that white supremacists support the Minuteman movement — and even joined the April border patrol.

Shaun Walker, chairman of the National Alliance, widely considered a white supremacist organization but which calls itself white separatist, says his organization agrees with the Minutemen on immigration and passes out literature at anti-immigration meetings.

The Utah Minutemen deny that white supremacists have infiltrated their group. They start their meetings with an affirmation against racism. They try to steer attention to a porous border, businesses that hire undocumented workers and politicians who refuse to act.

Segura is frustrated that the immigration debate keeps coming back to the "race card."