Thread: NPR Showcases Illegal Alien "Success Story"

From NPR's "All Things Considered" Web Page:

The life of Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa, a former illegal immigrant, may sound like a movie script, but it is no fiction.

Twenty years ago, he hopped a border fence from Mexico into the United States and became a migrant farmworker.

Today, he is a neurosurgeon and professor at Johns Hopkins University, and a researcher who is looking for a breakthrough in the treatment of brain cancer.

His remarkable journey began in a tiny farming community, 60 miles south of the U.S. border. Quinones-Hinojosa was born there, and by age 5, he was working at his father's gas station. His grandmother was a village healer and a midwife.

But in the mid-1970s, Mexico's economy collapsed, and his father could no longer keep food on the table for the family. Quinones-Hinojosa continued his schooling and became a teacher by the time he was 18, but he, too, was unable to provide for his family. So he made the decision — like so many relatives before him — to head north.

Quinones-Hinojosa picked cotton, tomatoes and cantaloupes, and lived in the fields in a broken-down camper he bought for $300. When his cousin told him he would be a farmworker for the rest of his life, he realized it was time to move on.

He signed up for English classes at a community college, where a teacher encouraged him to attend the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley on a scholarship, Quinones-Hinojosa developed a passion for the scientific method. He went on to Harvard Medical School, where he eventually delivered the commencement speech. It is also during this time that he received his U.S. citizenship.

As broadcast on the Sunday, May 6 edition of "All Things Considered," Quinones' story was a shameless endorsement of illegal border crossing. You can still hear a podcast by going to:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... d=10013111

The implied message was: "All illegal aliens have the potential to become the fine citizen this man has become." However, if you listened to him at all closely, you wouldn't think Senor Quinones was such a fine citizen. He was all about self-aggrandizement, and he couldn't have been more contemptuous of immigration law. Here is the letter I emailed to NPR regarding this corporate-sponsored piece of propaganda:

This was yet another thinly-veiled attempt by the mainstream media to make people comfortable with illegal immigration and open borders. Senor Quinones-Hinojosa got away with sneaking into our country, and NPR rewarded him for it with a feature story. Shame on you! He was clearly unrepentant about having entered this country illegally. I was appalled to hear how he portrayed his determination to violate our borders as a lesson in the importance of perseverence. The nerve of the man, throwing his crime in our faces like that! He should never have been made a citizen. We will come to regret assimilating into our society people like him who have a "so what?" mentality regarding American law.

Please visit npr.org and register your displeasure with this "All Things Considered" story!

"All illegal aliens have the potential to become the fine citizen this man has become."

Come out and take a look at our illegals here in California....not a neurosurgeon in the bunch. Lots of drug dealers, gang members, rapists,bums,ad nauseum

I was appalled to hear how he portrayed his determination to violate our borders as a lesson in the importance of perseverence

Obviously perservering for LEGAL citizenship was out of the question. Maybe he should check himself in for a CT scan because many of those neurons aren't firing correctly!

so he received a scolarship even though he was here illegaly? preventing a citizen from receiving it?

He signed up for English classes at a community college, where a teacher encouraged him to attend the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley on a scholarship, Quinones-Hinojosa developed a passion for the scientific method. He went on to Harvard Medical School, where he eventually delivered the commencement speech. It is also during this time that he received his U.S. citizenship.

No matter what he became, or who funded it, the fact remains that this man was a criminal first. Anything he got or acheived after that he was not entitled to as such.

I am sure he took the spot in college of a deserving Hispanic, Black, Asian, White, or Indian American who would also have become a fine member of society while still playing by the rules.

His first action in America was to break our laws and disregard our public will. He is no hero. Now that he is making the big bucks on the backs of the American taxpayer, will he refund all monies he used to get this great education back to the American Taxpayer?

He also took the spot of a would be Hispanic immigrant that is still waiting for permission to enter our country legally. Should we applaud him for that too? Personally, I would have rather had the immigrant willing to wait in line who was cheated, no matter what he might or might not have become.

NPR, another organization that promotes the thinking that "the ends justify the means" a twisted philosophy.