Ku Klux Klan steps up recruitment, focuses on immigration

This article originally appeared on AOL News

As immigration debates continue on the U.S.-Mexico border, the most infamous and oldest hate group in the country appears to be using the issue as a platform to step up its recruitment across the country.Multiple CNN affiliates report the Ku Klux Klan has been spreading its message using flyers and candy stuffed in zip-lock bags to attract new recruits.In the past couple of months, the pamphlets have been dropped in cities around the U.S., including the Hamptons in New York and neighborhoods in South Carolina, Texas and Orange County, California.According to KTLA, the flyer, in part, reads "SAVE OUR LAND. JOIN THE KLAN."Hamptons residents who got the flyers and spoke with WCBS were certainly put off by the recruitment effort."It's offensive. There's no doubt about it," one resident told WCBS."I'm just saddened. It's just sad," another said."Somebody left in our yard, I don't know if it was in our yard or in our mailbox, and it went in the garbage," a resident told WCBS.Couple that slogan with the KKK's hotline recording and it's clear the group is focusing on immigration in its strategy to get new members."Be a man, join the Klan. Illegal immigration is the story of America," the KKK hotline recording says, according to a WHNS report. "Always remember: if it ain't white, it ain't right. White power."Robert Jones, who runs one of three KKK chapters in New York, told The New York Times, "A lot of Americans are fed up with immigration right now. ... This immigration problem... is destroying this place. I have never seen the Klan expanding the way it is now."Despite those claims, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) says since the 1970s, the historically violent group has been "weakened" due to internal problems, court cases and from the government stepping in.The SPLC also says the KKK currently has between 5,000 and 8,000 members nationwide. That number is significantly down from its reported 4 million members during the 1920s.

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