Immigration Control Is Not (Necessarily) Racist. Again, I am irritated that fellow Liberal Keith Olbermann of MSNBC's news/analysis program Countdown, is just plain wrong about something. This time he is asserting that Rightwing nutjob Sharron Angle's most recent campaign ad (for U.S. Senator from Nevada) is racist. He then showed that ad in its entirety so we might judge for ourselves. Alrite. I've judged. It's not racist.
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Olbermann asserted that it suggested that Mexican illegals are coming across the border to attack white children. Olbermann said the ad shows "squinty-eyed, brown-skinned young men coming for Nevada's schoolchildren — not the black ones, nor the Latino ones, nor the Asian ones; the white ones". Has he lost his mind?
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For one thing, the fotos in the ad are in black-and-white, not color.
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The ad refers to illegals crossing the border and joining gangs. Most viewers would assume that those are Latino gangs, not interested in recruiting Anglo white kids. The only reference to schoolchildren was visual, showing kids in class in the segment of the ad that said that Harry Reid twice voted against making English the official language of the United States (as well he should have; such a measure is a preposterously unnecessary provocation; English is exterminating all other languages, including Spanish, at a very fast pace).
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It is a huge leap of irration to say that any of the Angle ads, separately or put together, constitutes an assertion that Latino illegals are "coming for Nevada's schoolchildren"! It is this kind of extreme misstatement of the case that subverts the appeal of Liberal candidates with white voters, and of Liberal commentators with white viewers. What next? Sharron "Angle" chose her name — or her backers chose her because of her name — to suggest "Anglo", and thus not just English-speaking, but also white? Get a grip, KO.
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This is what the Angle ad actually says.

Waves of illegal aliens streaming across our border, joining violent gangs, forcing families to live in fear. And what's Harry Reid doing about it? Voting to give illegal aliens Social Security benefits, tax breaks and college tuition. Voting against declaring English our national language. Twice. And even siding with Obama and the President of Mexico to block Arizona's tough new immigration law. Harry Reid: It's clear whose side he's on, and it's NOT YOURS.

Factually, that is mostly correct. The language could be criticized for vagueness as to how many illegals join violent gangs — all? most? some? almost none? But both Harry Reid and Keith Olbermann do back the so-called "DREAM Act", which is described thus in Wikipedia:

This bill would provide certain inadmissible or deportable alien students who graduate from US high schools, who are of good moral character, arrived in the U.S. as minors, and have been in the country continuously for at least five years prior to the bill's enactment, the opportunity to earn conditional permanent residency if they complete two years in the military or two years at a four year institution of higher learning. The alien students would obtain temporary residency for a six year period. Within the six year period, a qualified student must have "acquired a degree from an institution of higher education in the United States or [have] completed at least 2 years, in good standing, in a program for a bachelor's degree or higher degree in the United States," or have "served in the uniformed services for at least 2 years and, if discharged, [have] received an honorable discharge." Military Enlistment contracts require an eight year commitment. "Any alien whose permanent resident status is terminated [according to the terms of the Act] shall return to the immigration status the alien had immediately prior to receiving conditional permanent resident status under this Act."

You can't serve in the military without a Social Security card, and participation in the military would entail pay that is subject to Social Security taxes and, thus, entitlement to Social Security benefits down the road.
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How would DREAM Act kids be able to stay here if their parents are deported? Not everyone has an aunt or uncle they can stay with for the six-year conditional-residency period during which they are supposed to go to college or serve in the military. So how are they to stay in the U.S. if the parents who support them are deported? If they are to support themselves by working legally in the U.S. economy, they will need a Social Security card, and their wages will be subject to SocSec taxes, so they will be entitled to SocSec benefits once they accrue enuf quarter-years of SS tax payments upon achieving permanent residence.
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So the Angle ad's "Social Security benefits" claim appears to be largely if not even wholly true, as regards high-schoolers. I can't fact-check the ad's "tax breaks and college tuition" claims without knowing what specific legislation Reid voted for that the Angle campaign means. The DREAM Act as it now stands does not provide any tuition to students who participate in the program.
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"YOURS" in the ad refers to voters — U.S. citizens of any race — not white people. Legal Latino immigrants and U.S.-born Hispanics (U.S. citizens, not just residents) are endangered by floods of illegals, some of whom are indeed in gangs that victimize Latinos before they get to anybody else, because they are based in Latino neighborhoods, and Latino-on-Latino crime is presumably as common as black-on-black crime (which is all-too common). Even without crime (other than the crime of violating our borders), illegal workers undercut Hispanics who are legally entitled to be in the U.S., by working cheap at jobs legal immigrants might otherwise get.
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The foto of schoolchildren was used with the text "REID voted against declaring English our national language. TWICE." I assume that is also factually correct. So why does KO insist on seeing that foto as implying that Latino illegals are somehow "coming for ... white [kids]"?
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(Note: Many years ago I did a one-minute "editorial reply" on WNBC-TV (flagship station of the NBC Television Network, in NYC) to oppose as unnecessary and provocative a proposal to declare English our national language (even if it did not ban services or ballots in other languages). I stated the obvious, that such a measure was needlessly provocative, because English is not endangered in the United States but, quite the contrary, Spanish is. Around that time, Hispanic Magazine had a cover story about the future of Spanish in the United States that included a statement from Congressman José Serrano, who is of Puerto Rican descent, that many Latinos are afraid that their children or, at latest, grandchildren will not speak Spanish. That fear is well founded, in that modern instructional technologies (such as DVD's with video and bilingual scripts; microfones so students with a computer can compare their pronunciation to a video teacher's) greatly ease the task of trying to learn English.)
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There is no 'comprehensive immigration reform' proposal now under consideration for us to evaluate, but most of the noise from the Left indicates that they are proposing some form of amnesty. The last time amnesty was passed, the rate of illegal immigration JUMPED; it did not decline.
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My stance on U.S.-Mexican relations, if not also Central American immigration, is clear: it is long since time for us to admit that the borders from the Rio Grande to the easternmost part of Panama are dysfunctional and should be erased, replaced with state boundaries of a bunch of Sunbelt states to be created from Meso-America. Free trade and free movement of people would benefit everyone in all the (present) countries involved. The resources of all new states would add to the resources, natural and human, of the Nation, and finance the development of areas that now send large numbers of immigrants to the United States. Such development would let most people now tempted to leave their homes for the U.S., instead stay home and find work in projects in their own village, where most would prefer to stay if only conditions were tolerable. That means that if we provide electrification, water and sewage treatment, good schools, good roads, cellfone service, high-speed Internet connections, and all the other infrastructure of modern life, the only immigrants — become in-migrants — who would pour over the erased borders would be people who want the freedom of a new place and new start. They would likely be "the best and the britest", people we should be very glad to have in the present U.S.
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There are very good reasons to oppose the incompetent loon Sharron Angle without exaggerating and misstating her anti-illegal-immigration ads as racist. I am hostile to illegal immigration, even from — indeed, especially from — Canada, another area that should long ago have joined the Union. It's not a racial thing. I am from one of the original Thirteen States, NJ. We gave up our sovereignty to a larger entity in which we came to share an overall sovereignty. We built the economy and institutions of the United States, then admitted so many new states that we all, in the original states, lost control of our country to the multitudinous voters in new states. But they didn't conspire against us. Rather, we all discussed our common interests, and enacted programs to address shared problems. What worked for 13 states works for 50, and can work for 75 or 100 — or more.
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But present arrangements have to change. They just plain don't work. Worse, they have produced a nitemare for Mexico that has killed 28,000 people, and counting. The border is the problem. Annexation, not immigration, is the solution.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,427 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM