Thread: Use of fear-mongering

http://www.dailybulletin.com/news/ci_4911388

Yes, both sides make use of fear-mongering
Conor Friedersdorf, Staff Writer
Article Launched: 12/28/2006 12:00:00 AM PST

Often you'll read that someone is scaring illegal immigrants. The tone is always disapproving.

Jose Gonzales, an "immigrant advocate," told the Associated Press this week that illegal immigrants should be given driver's licenses.

Otherwise they'll be afraid that a ticket or traffic accident will get them deported, he said. "The fear they live with is inhuman."
Beyond Borders: View our special section on immigration

The New York Times ran a Christmas Eve story under the headline "Immigrants Go From Farms to Jails, and a Climate of Fear Settles In." The story's core: "As record-setting enforcement of immigration laws upends old, unspoken arrangements, a new climate of fear is sweeping through the rural communities of western and central New York."

If you're like me, you favor enforcing immigration laws, even as you feel sorry for those illegal immigrants who live in fear of being deported.

I even feel sorry for the illegal immigrants whose fears are irrational. Some believe the Minutemen will shoot them as they try to cross the border. Others believe they'll be arrested and taken off to Guantanamo
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Bay. They're wrong, but their fear is real, and I wish those imaginary fears could be alleviated.

But why is it that I never read disapproving stories when "immigrant advocates" stoke irrational fears among immigrants? Why are they allowed to scare with impunity?

The quintessential example comes from a Reuters dispatch I saw last week: "SAN ANTONIO, Texas (Reuters) - U.S. Hispanic groups and activists on Thursday called for a moratorium on workplace raids to round up illegal immigrants, saying they were reminiscent of Nazi crackdowns on Jews in the 1930s."

Am I the only one who finds it disgusting to mislead poor immigrants into believing they're about to be led off to the gas chambers? When you invoke the Nazis, that's basically the connotation you're counting on.

Here's how another source in the story reacted to recent raids at farms and meatpacking plants:

"This unfortunately reminds me of when Hitler began rounding up the Jews for no reason and locking them up," Democratic Party activist Carla Vela said. "Now they're coming for the Latinos, who will they come for next?"

Yes, that's right Latino newspaper readers, Carla Vela wants you to believe that your society is poised to treat you as Hitler treated the Jews. She's so keen on your political support that she's willing to intimate you'll soon be pulled screaming from bed and watch as your children are stripped and shot.

The term for this is fear-mongering. It is particularly repugnant when directed at poor, uneducated illegal immigrants who trust you as an authority figure.

Somehow, however, it's those who oppose illegal immigration who are cast, almost exclusively, as the fear-mongers in this debate. Lou Dobbs frets about American wages, assimilation patterns and the costs of high levels of immigration, and he's regularly characterized as an "alarmist."

And perhaps he is.

Meanwhile, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Hispanic National Bar Association, and the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials liken federal immigration agents to the Gestapo and imply a Latino Holocaust may be coming.

They are characterized as "immigrant advocates" and "Latino advocacy groups."

Bizarre.

E-mail examples of "immigrant advocates" scaring immigrants to Conor.Friedersdorf@dailybulletin.com; you'll find reader responses and a link to the aforementioned Reuters story at www.beyondbordersblog.com.

I seem to recall Aztlan/Mexica supporters claiming somewhere that Haliburton concentration camps were being built specifically for them. I'll try and find the link.

They always get scared and at times don't even show up to work in Miami as ICE is after them and each time they have a significant number of criminals they catch, they publicize it. I just wish that the fear would make more of them leave voluntarily as there is said to be 885,000 illegals in Miami alone.

"This unfortunately reminds me of when Hitler began rounding up the Jews for no reason and locking them up," Democratic Party activist Carla Vela said. "Now they're coming for the Latinos, who will they come for next?"

Is this the best the OBL's pro amnesty supporters can come up with? Simply comparing us to the holocost and the gestapo is completly obsurd. I know we all have also heard the new fence being compared to the Berlin Wall.
Do these idiots not understand their history? Hitler gathered up the jews because in his mind, anyone who wasn't blue eyed and blonde were inferior beings that must be destroyed. Hitler was also very insane.
The Berlin Wall was also built to keep people IN, not out of East Germany.

Do you get that all you OBL's who may be reading this? Stop comparing apples and oranges by comparing US citizens who want their laws enforced to Germany and the Nazi regime ways during WWII.
You are insulting all of our brave vets and their familes who suffered and died. The OBL's should be ashamed of themselves for exploiting the lower education factor of illegals to "brainwash" them into thinking what you want them to think.

These latino support groups should be closed down immediatly just for even comparing us to the gestapo, Hitler and the nazi's, Berlin Wall, blah blah blah...
Enough is enough. Build the damn wall and deport them all.