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Title: Big Media Snooze as Illegals Make Themselves at Home
Source:
National Vanguard
URL Source: http://www.nationalvanguard.org/story.php?id=4966
Published: Apr 28, 2005
Author: Richard Forsyth
Post Date: 2005-04-28 13:58:34 by 1776
Keywords: Themselves, Illegals, Snooze
Views: 106
Comments: 9
How many of these "victims" are illegal aliens (whoops, "undocumented workers")? How much of their earnings go back to Mexico, or wherever they hail from? How many public services do they receive, and at what cost, relative to what taxes they pay? After years of residency here, why don't they speak English? 
Massive lawbreaking encouraged by banks, politicians, and the Wall Street Journal? Hell, that's not news!
by Richard Forsyth
I'M A sensitive guy. Really. Just ask my wife. But I'm a hard-eyed skeptic when my brethren in the media insist on spinning weepy stories about the plight of migrant workers.
The latest chapter in this ongoing saga appeared in a newspaper up the road from where I live and work in Florida. The story focused on "Little Mexico" – formally known as the farming community of Fellsmere – where two-thirds of the population is Spanish-speaking, mostly from Mexico. Here, we're told that these migrants are forced to live in ramshackle housing, paying exorbitant rents (if $400 a month can be considered high).
While it would be tolerant, compassionate and politically correct to shed a tear for the downtrodden masses, I prefer to ask questions.
These questions are rarely, if ever, asked by reporters in the mainstream press. To do so might offend. It also might require doing some actual legwork to get the answers. This, of course, would undermine a neat, sympathetic story line.
Instead, we get the standard template: Pick a group, usually a minority group, and construct a "news" article detailing how it is being victimized by businesses, bureaucrats, racial/religious bigots or society at large. Get quotes from advocates proposing government programs and/or legal action to alleviate the problem(s).
This is done under the pseudo-journalistic commandment to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. But when relevant questions aren't asked or answered, the reportage turns simplistic and superficial. And Big Media fecklessly wonder why no one takes them seriously anymore.
Opinion polls consistently show that Americans consider illegal immigration to be a serious problem in this country. Yet neither politicians nor the press seem to pay much attention. This disconnect is frustrating to a public that expresses a desire for tighter border security and expulsion of illegals.
That disconnect was illustrated in another Fellsmere story. On one recent Saturday, some 500 Mexican citizens lined up at the elementary school to receive matricula consular cards from the Mexican embassy staff that caravanned up from Miami.
The annual event was portrayed as a giant piñata party. But immigration analysts (none of whom was quoted in the news stories I saw) point out one salient fact that was missing: The only people needing a Mexican identification card are illegal aliens.
The matricula consular is useful only for illegal aliens. Legal immigrants don't need them because they already have US-issued documents.
Yet, amidst ongoing national security concerns and "terror alerts," no one from the Immigration and Naturalization Service bothered to show up that day in Fellsmere – or at any of the other hundreds of cities where matriculas are handed out.
But banks do. They bring glossy brochures, in Spanish, trumpeting their financial programs, including home mortgages. With matriculas in hand, illegals can open accounts and send their debit cards home, where relatives draw on the funds. These remittances, running more than $14 billion each year to Mexico, are that country's second biggest outside source of income after oil exports. This banking bonanza is seldom explained in press accounts.
Now, lawmakers are poised to make it even easier for illegals. Congress is considering new "guest worker" programs that will lead to full-fledged U.S. citizenship. Meanwhile, a growing number of states grants driver's licenses and in-state college tuition to illegals.
The media report these initiatives as "fairness" for "hard-working" immigrants (assiduously not identified as illegal). This gives cover for businesses to go on mining cheap labor and for politicians to tap into the fast-growing "Hispanic constituency."
The economic and the cultural ramifications of large-scale illegal immigration would seem fertile fields for inquiry. Unfortunately, coverage typically leans to those fluffy features touting the marvels of diversity. Hard news (cue the victimization theme) appears only sporadically, as it did in 2003, when the INS raided 60 Wal-Mart stores and arrested more than 250 suspected illegals.
Lest you think I am an apologist for big business, let me be clear: Wal-Mart deserves whatever penalties it gets, and then some. Hiring illegal workers is wrong, and the punishment should be more than just the "cost of doing business.''
With an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants residing in this country – and 'Hispanics' accounting for a majority of births in Arizona and California -- it would be nice if the INS conducted a workplace raid more than every couple of years. It also would be nice if the media were paying attention to this browning of America.
The Wall Street Journal, which touts itself as a "conservative" publication, reveals its bias when it supports the absurdly titled Border and Immigration Improvement Act, which would move toward legalizing illegals and, thereby, ensure a continuing supply of low-wage workers.
When the Yankee bible of big business winks and nods over illegal activity, it is condoning lawlessness and dismantling what's left of our borders. That's not comforting the afflicted. That's giving away the store.
--
Richard Forsyth is a Florida-based journalist and author.
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#1. To: Mr Nuke Buzzcut, noone222, RickyJ, zipporah, Diana, Red Jones (#0)
swamped
Alex Jones and Terry Anderson are rocking on the illegal invasion right now.
Not to mention, the corporate push by those like Home Depot and other corporations that build facilities for illegals to gather looking for work.. it's downright disgusting.
Our people are scratching to find a job and these illegals and legal 3rd world invasion are taking them and then BILL GATES says, bring more in:
RE the H1-B issue issue ..check out this link:
H1-B visa info Talk to techies anywhere and they will tell you about what has happened to their jobs.
I personally know programmers that are unable to get jobs in the industry.. other than occasional contractor jobs..of course short term with NO benefits.. and one of these people was going back to school for engineering but has to take another major for there arent any jobs in engineering either.. so what's left? Getting out while you're still able and attempt to make yourself a future elsewhere..
This all happened by design, not accident.
Of course it did.. it was interesting when my son was traveling abroad..he noticed the same exact verbage was used in other countries as is in use here.. "jobs that Americans won't do".. "jobs that Greeks won't do" .. "jobs that Italians wont do".. Gee just a coincidence? uh huh..
#2. To: 1776 (#1)
#3. To: 1776 (#1)
But banks do. They bring glossy brochures, in Spanish, trumpeting their financial programs, including home mortgages. With matriculas in hand, illegals can open accounts and send their debit cards home, where relatives draw on the funds. These remittances, running more than $14 billion each year to Mexico, are that country's second biggest outside source of income after oil exports. This banking bonanza is seldom explained in press accounts.
#4. To: Zipporah (#3)
Not to mention, the corporate push by those like Home Depot and other corporations that build facilities for illegals to gather looking for work.. it's downright disgusting.
Microsoft Urges Importation of Foreign Workers
#5. To: 1776 (#4)
#6. To: Zipporah (#5)
RE the H1-B issue issue ..check out this link:
In fact take the field of engineering there is little incentive to undertake that course of study now with all the work going to the overseas people.
The system is corrupt and hostile to our people, it cannot be reformed.
#7. To: 1776 (#6)
Talk to techies anywhere and they will tell you about what has happened to their jobs. In fact take the field of engineering there is little incentive to undertake that course of study now with all the work going to the overseas people.
#8. To: Zipporah (#7)
#9. To: 1776 (#8)
This all happened by design, not accident.
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