Earlier tonight I was watching a program called “Noticiero” on La Estrella, a Spanish-language, HD channel that airs on an affiliate station of WPIX in New York, whose chief topic was-suppress your shock for a moment–immigration! The show’s host-who I remember chiefly for hosting a news-magazine tabloid program, roughly analogous to A Current Affair, back in the late 90s-introduced the first story, which focused on the current furor surrounding the now-vitiated Arizona law known as SB 1070.
The piece, like most reports that run on English-language television news in this country about the issue of illegal aliens, focused on the plight of the undocumented workers, “trabajando,” who make the perilous journey into the United States from Mexico and various Central American nations. However, the producer of the segment’s chief interest seemed to be portraying all supporters of tougher immigration enforcement as not only “racista,” i.e. racist, but as card-carrying Nazis. The better part of that three minute-long segment was devoted to b-roll footage of the National Socialist Movement-a genuinely racist, extremely small, cultish white supremacist movement-parading around in full Nazi regalia, presumably shouting anti-Hispanic slogans.
In other words, the hundreds of thousands of concerned citizens who have lobbied their congressmen and women on behalf of erecting an adequate border fence, who have rallied against amnesty in cities and towns across the nation, and who have expressed their discontent with the anarchic status quo in myriad democratic, peaceful, pluralistic ways… These people are essentially racist skinheads, at least according to the people who work at Noticiero.
This is a very familiar argument, dating back to at least the debate about Proposition 187, a California initiative that would have denied illegal aliens access to most non-emergency social services. In fact, the tenor of their arguments in favor of open borders has an increasingly anachronistic, shopworn aspect to it that doesn’t bear any relation to the events occurring in border states and throughout Mexico and Central America. This was highlighted by the host of Noticiero himself, who proceeded to introduce a segment about the horrific violence-up to and including decapitations of law enforcement officials-flourishing in Ciudad Juarez. This is a city just across the river from El Paso, Texas, which rival drug cartels and their private armies are dismembering piece-by-piece in a bid for narco-supremacy.
But that wasn’t all! This chilling news segment was followed by a report on two attacks by sicarios, i.e. hit-men, in the capital of El Salvador that resulted in the grisly deaths of 16 bus passengers, some of whom were gunned down mercilessly, while others were slowly immolated. In other words, we have a situation where our neighbors to the south can not control the rampant violence and terror that various drug-traffickers and their enforcers-many of them members of prison gangs that have deep tentacles inside of the United States, e.g. the Salva Maratruchas-have spawned in their wake.
So open-borders supporters find themselves in a bit of a bind. Optimally, the public would be brow-beaten into accepting their definition of us as virulent racists who are only motivated by innate bigotry and xenophobia. This obviates the need for a real debate on the tangible problems that ensue from the lack of immigration enforcement in this country, plus it gives them the moral, although not intellectual, high ground. The only problem is that reality keeps intruding. You can’t pretend that the only people concerned about the inflow of illegal aliens are those motivated by racism, while at the same time admitting that many of these same “undocumented migrants” might in fact be dangerous, felonious criminals. It’s just not possible.
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