Tag: Immigration

Angle Ad: If You’re White, Aliens are Coming to Get You

Trish

The newest ad from U.S. Senate candidate from Nevada, Sharron Angle, is the Willie Horton story of our day. Anyone who could watch this piece of work and not get the fear-mongering it employs should watch it again. But just in case you still don’t get it, Mi Blog es tu Blog‘s Laura Martinez breaks it down. Ads like Angle’s, she says:

…remind us that Latino immigrants are a scary bunch — crossing the border armed with knifes and torches, ready to strip you of your benefits and jobs and scare the hell out of your white family.

Angle’s spots go way beyond blatantly stereotyping Latino immigrants as a bandana-wearing crowd ready to corner you in some dark alley. More gravely, they send a message of “us” against “them.” It’s Brown vs. White. Watch closely: While the ad mentions immigrants going to college and collecting social security, every shot of the “illegal aliens” shows particularly swarthy Latino youth all dressed up for gang initiation. The family that is shown living in fear of them is white.

…I can only hope these “dangerous fellows” will take some time off their criminal activities to go to the polls this November.

Am I Illegal? Are You?

Trish

LibertyIf “birthright” citizens, as anti-immigrant Republicans and tea baggers call them, are declared illegal, how far back will we go? Will I, and other descendants of illegals, become retroactive non-citizens?

My mother’s father came to this country illegally from Italy in the World War I era wave that brought most of the people who later produced such cultural touchstones as the Godfather epics, Little Italies in major cities, pizza as fast food, and the reality show Jersey Shore.

On his first attempt to become an American, my teenage grandfather spent the crossing in the hold of the ocean liner George Washington alternately trying to memorize the identity on the papers he purchased illegally and vomiting from seasickness. When the boat finally landed, he was held at Ellis Island and found to be without papers — a WOP — and shipped back to Italy.

There is no point in trying to figure out who is worthy of a piece of the American pie

Many months later, after earning enough money to try again, he made a second crossing, studying his illegal papers until he had his false I.D. down perfectly. He had also made connections with Italians in this country who vouched for him at Ellis Island by telling the authorities that he had both family and a job here.

[…]

Study Finds Flat Crime Rate on Arizona Border – GOP Is Lying about Lawlessness to Gin Up Votes

Jon Ponder

Brewer
Brewer
Last week, Arizona GOP Gov. Jan Brewer, the main promoter of the state’s infamous new anti-immigrant law, was caught in a lie when she claimed that her state’s deserts were littered with the corpses of victims of blood-thirsty illegal immigrants. The bodies, she said, were “either buried or just lying there that have been beheaded.”

But local media did a survey of coroners around the state and found not a single instance of decapitation in which an illegal alien was a suspect. Reporters’ calls to the governor’s office requesting documentation to back up her claim that her state was in the throes of an epidemic of decapitations were not returned.

Now the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank reports that a study two months ago by the state’s largest newspaper, the Arizona Republic (see the paper’s report here), found that the entire premise of the new law — that illegals have driven up the crime rate along the border — is a lie:

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Poll: Latinos Abandoning GOP in Droves – After Short-Term Gain This Fall, Loss of Hispanics Could Kill the Republican Party

Jon Ponder

photo-siprgn-imprmigrant-faprmily

The American public favors the new Arizona anti-immigrant law by 61 percent, according to a new NBC/MSNBC/Telemundo poll, but the law is already starting to do for the national GOP what Proposition 187, a 1994 anti-immigrant ballot initiative, did for the California Republican Party: Kill it.

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Because Joe Wilson is Your Pre-Existing Condition

Trish

joewilson-preexisting
I don’t know how long Rep. Joe Wilson (R-Teabagland) will be the butt of our jokes, so get Joe Wilson Is Your Preexisting Condition.com while it’s hot.

Among our favorites:

  • Joe Wilson yells Free Bird at concerts
  • Joe Wilson doesn’t respect the constitution of your United States
  • Joe Wilson woke up your baby after you just got it to sleep
  • Joe Wilson yells while adults are talking
  • Joe Wilson thinks you’re too stupid to actually read the bill

There are many more. See for yourself.

Arizona’s Priorities are Different from Yours and Mine

Trish

A new Rasmussen poll provides the third reason you don’t want to live in Arizona. First, let’s review numbers one and two:

1. John McCain is your United States senator
2. Temperatures over 110 are common

And now, number three:

Fifty-one percent (51%) of Arizona voters say it is more important for Congress to pass immigration reform than health care reform…

Voters in the Grand Canyon State still highly regard Maricopa Country Sheriff Joseph Arpaio, known for his tough immigration enforcement. Fifty-seven percent (57%) say the sheriff’s policies have helped the state’s image, showing little change from May.

There you have it folks. Bottom line: if you want to live in Southwest, move to New Mexico where they have Bill Richardson, John Nichols, and Taos.

Florida Preserves Its Anti-Asian Heritage

Buck Banks

asiancaricature.jpg
Last week, 52 percent of Florida voters voted to keep an 80-year-old state constitutional amendment on the books that prevents Asian immigrants from owning property in the state. The provision dates back to the early 19oos, when a significant influx of Asian immigrants — especially on the West Coast — prompted California and eight other states to pass similar anti-Asian ownership laws.

The provision has nothing to do with illegal aliens; it’s about institutionalized discrimination against people who don’t look like white Florida Crackers or even black Florida Crackers

In Florida, most of the Asian immigrants were Japanese brought in by none other than the father of Florida exploitation, oil baron Henry Flagler. He brought immigrants from Denmark (hence, the Broward County town of Dania) and Japan (see Yamato Road in Boca Raton) to plant and work pineapple farms whose fruit would be carried north on Flagler’s East Coast Railroad, which otherwise would have dead-headed back after disgorging tourists, land speculators, profiteers and supplies.

Of course, as soon as Flagler discovered that it was cheaper to buy pineapples in Cuba and ship them up the Mississippi River, he abandoned his immigrant farmers in South Florida, who were left to shift for themselves as best they could in what was still largely a wilderness.

So why didn’t Floridians vote to repeal the jingoistic amendment? Partly, it was the wording of the thing:

Proposing an amendment to the State Constitution to delete provisions authorizing the Legislature to regulate or prohibit the ownership, inheritance, disposition, and possession of real property by aliens ineligible for citizenship.

Yep, that “aliens ineligible for citizenship” was a killer, conjuring up all kinds of anti-immigration images in the tiny minds of my fellow Floridians. That, and the anti-immigration groups who claimed that the provision as it now stands would prevent terrorist groups from buying property in Florida. I mean, nobody wants a Muslim madrassa or Taliban training facility in their neighborhood, right? And that’s the terrorists’ new strategy — instead of flying airplanes into our buildings, they are going to BUY our buildings ….

Look, people, the provision has nothing to do with illegal aliens; it’s about institutionalized discrimination against people who don’t look like white Florida Crackers or even black Florida Crackers, for that matter. Plus, it’s an embarrassment — Florida is the only state that has not repealed its anti-Asian law. But there is hope: supporters plan to have it back on the 2010 ballot, and maybe, like New Mexico’s repeal of a similar law, the second time around will be the charm.

Study: Immigration Not Linked to Crime

Buck Banks

immigration.jpgWell shuck my grits! The primary argument of all the wall-building, border-enforcing, round-’em-up-and-ship-’em-home anti-immigration wingnuts is wrong — immigrants, especially those from Mexico, are less likely than your teenager to commit a crime in the United States. That’s according to a new study by a Harvard sociology prof (note: not Yale, which graduated George W.) who also found that immigrants are dis-incentivized toward crime by a desire to work, ambition and a fear of being deported.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Tom Tancredo.

[Robert] Sampson also studied data from police records, the U.S Census and surveyed more than 8,000 Chicago residents. The study showed there was significant immigration growth, including illegal aliens-in the mid-1990s, peaking at the end of the decade.

But during that time the national homicide rate plunged. Crime also dropped in immigration hot spots, such as Los Angeles, where it fell 45 percent overall, San Jose, Dallas and Phoenix.

Sampson argues that public perception drives a large part of the debate so its easy for politicians to blame illegal immigration for driving up the crime rate. Although it is difficult to point to any data to substantiate it, not many people question it.

“There is a pretty powerful underlying current of belief in society that is pretty resistant, stubborn if you will to the facts,” Sampson said.

So much for one of the less pressing but more insidious “issues” of the current presidential campaign.

If Terrorist Came in From Canada, Is Border Fence Far Behind?

Trish

The new faces of terror

It appears the bomber who targeted a military recruiting station in Times Square came in this country via Canada, so you know what that means. Soon the Minutemen will rush north to construct a fence the entire 5,522 miles that separate us from the threat of Canadian extremists. Or not. Maybe they only want to protect our border singular. You know, the brown border. The one with Mexicans on the other side.

High-level law enforcement sources told ABC News that a border stop in Canada has yielded evidence that may be linked to the case, and that individuals are being sought in connection with the case.

O Canada?

Canadian authorities declined to comment on the matter.

Sources said the border stop took place about a month ago, but today U.S. and Canadian authorities were revisiting the incident because of circumstantial evidence noticed at the time of the stop and the behavior of one of four individuals in the car that was stopped.

At the time of the stop, one young man fled the vehicle on foot, law enforcement sources said.

The last time we were threatened by Canada was when Bob and Doug McKenzie foiled a plot by Elsinore Beer’s Brewmeister Smith to take over the world. No one suggested building a fence back then, and I doubt they will now. After all, it’s not like it’s Mexico or something.