JONESBORO - Jeannie Burlsworth worries about a lot of things.
She fears for her safety and her family since she became the leader of a drive to ban illegal aliens from receiving certain state services.
"I'm in a real struggle here," she says. "This is evil. Thesepeople are a danger."
She also frets about America merging with Canada and Mexico, a superhighway "10 football fields wide" running from Mexico through Texas, and the United States allowing part of Kansas City to become "sovereign Mexican territory."
"There will be a North American union," she said. "We will lose our sovereignty. Our constitution is in jeopardy."
She refuses to give out the names of her husband and other family members for fear of what opponents in the illegal-alien debate may do. During an interview at a Jonesboro coffee shop, she told her daughter-in-law to keep her name secret.
"I've had death threats," Burlsworth said. "Yes, sir."
She said a Hispanic person,someone she perceived as an illegal alien, told her "the Chicanos are going to string me up and this kind of stuff." She wouldn't describe the circumstances of the threat or even say where it happened, and she said she didn't file a police report.
"Yeah, like they are prosecuting illegal aliens," Burlsworth explained.
Burlsworth, 53, of Bryant is the chairman of the Secure Arkansas campaign, which is trying to collect 61,974 Arkansas registered voters' signatures on a petition by July 7 to qualify the proposed initiated act for the Nov. 4 ballot.
The party primary elections, typically big days for collecting signatures for ballot initiatives, will be Tuesday.
The proposed law would make state agencies take affidavits in which people say they are citizens before they would be eligible for government benefits. The Department of Health, which doesn't ask for residency documentation before providing service, would be affected.
Some benefits that federal law requires, such as public school education, would be allowed to continue for illegal aliens. Also allowed would be Medicaid-funded prenatal care, which isn't federally required but which the state has chosen to provide since 2004.
Burlsworth says she doesn't know details of why certain things are allowed in the initiative and why others aren't, saying attorneys she wouldn't identify helped put it together.
During a speech in Jonesboro last week outside the CraigheadCounty Courthouse, in a thick Midwestern accent, she lamented the increase in the Hispanic population in Arkansas since 1990.
"We can't take any more," she said, her voice rising. "We need our borders secure. We need an immigration policy. The citizens should be outraged in the stateof Arkansas. I'm outraged to see our politicians have done nothing. Our legislators need to get busy. We are being forced to subsidize illegal aliens, and enough isenough. Our cup runneth over. I'm concerned about Arkansas being a sanctuary state. We've got to put something in place, and if that's wrong then that's just too bad. We've got to do something fast. Arkansas, you've got to wake up."
Few people in Arkansas politics are familiar with Burlsworth, but some don't like her message.
Stacy Sells of Little Rock, a public relations executive and a member of the Arkansas Friendship Coalition, which opposes efforts to place further restrictions on illegal aliens, said Burlsworth's assertions don't make sense.
"This sounds like your classic conspiracy theory generated byfringe talk radio and the Internet," Sells said. "It seems rather far-fetched to think that America is building a superhighway to import illegal immigrants from Mexico into America or that Mexicans are trying to overthrow the American government. This is simply ludicrous. I have serious concerns about any group or individual from this paranoid mindset trying to establish state policy on a matter as important as this."
State Rep. Rick Green, R-Van Buren, who sponsored a law last year aimed at preventing firms that contract with the state from hiring illegal aliens, said he knows nothing about Burlsworth and has talked to her only once. But he likes that she has gotten involved with the immigration issue.
Bryant Police Chief Larry Coffman said Burlsworth is wrong to say that police won't arrest illegal aliens for criminal infractions of state law, such as making threats.
"They are held accountable just like anybody else," he said.
Burlsworth was born in Mountain Home. As a child, she moved with her family to Kansas City, Mo. Her father drove a cement mixer. Her mother ran an employment agency.
She dropped out of high school to get married and later worked at her mother's business "and that's how I came to love people," she says, "just interviewing" people wanting jobs.
She and her husband, who is in the insurance business, lived in Ohio and West Virginia before returning to Arkansas in 2000 after the death of Brandon Burlsworth, a former Razorback football player and her husband's younger brother.
"He was a good kid," she said, holding back tears. "My husband was really grieving, and he needed to get back home."
They lived in Hot Springs for a while, then Rogers, before moving to Bryant about 2004.
A homemaker, she has two sons and two granddaughters. But she stays active outside the home in the anti-abortion movement and traveled back to Kansas City two years ago to help fight a ballot measure to expand stem-cell use. Her side lost.
Burlsworth voted for President Bush in the 2000 and 2004 elections but regrets it.
"He's one of the worst presidents I think we've ever had," she says. "It doesn't make any sense for the commander in chief of the United States to go to Iraq and fight a war and leave our borders unprotected. He should be protecting the sovereignty of the United States. He has his own agenda. I don't like it."
This election, she attended gatherings for Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul but says she wasn't a supporter and was only trying to get more information.
She says she has no problems with Hispanics, as long as they are in America legally.
But she says Hispanics who are illegal aliens don't care about American values andwould rather display the Mexican flag.
"We've just about lost California," she says.
Her group raised $1,015 through April. It formed March 3 and didn't get the go-ahead from the attorney general's office for a petition drive until May 8.
She realizes she's facing some tough odds, especially with alow turnout expected for Tuesday's election, meaning fewer people will be easily available for canvassers.
Only about a dozen people attended her rally in Jonesboro on Wednesday followed by about five people in Rogers on Thursday.
But she says she has lots of volunteers, including about 25county coordinators.
"We need to build momentum," she says. "We haven't had time to build momentum. You've got to give it a try. We're not going away."
In Jonesboro, she faced questions from potential supporters about why her proposal allows state-funded prenatal care for illegal aliens.
Green, the legislator from Van Buren, said he will likely support the Secure Arkansas proposal but wishes it included more restrictions.
Burlsworth acknowledged that the initiative "is not that strong" compared with what some want.
She said she hopes that if the Secure Arkansas initiative becomes law, the Legislature will feel more confident to take additional action against illegal aliens.
"People can't stand there like lambs to the slaughter," she said.
Arkansas, Pages 24, 30 on 05/18/2008