Euphemisms, Manipulation And Deceit On Illegal Immigration

Not that it isn't illegal for you to be here, but come on in anyway...

Not that it isn’t illegal for you to be here, but come on in anyway…

The U.S. needs to fix its illegal immigration policies, and deal with the millions of underground, and not so underground, illegals currently in the country, having children, getting benefits, often being abused and exploited while not integrating into U.S. society. This has been true for decades, and both parties, as well as the U.S. business community, Mexico, and the illegal immigrants themselves, share responsibility for allowing a major problem to metastasize into a crisis.

The proclivity of journalists to isolate blame to one participant in this fiasco to the exclusion of the others compounds the problem, by making a bi-partisan solution impossible and giving individuals a pass on accountability who deserve none. Even worse is the habit of the news media to adopt the misleading and dishonest terminology of open-border advocates and illegal immigrant activists. Attempting to use deceptive language, exaggerations and outright misrepresentations to make ethically dubious policies seem benign to the public has become standard practice among Democrats and progressives in the Obama era (Republicans and conservatives too, but at least at the present, less flamboyantly and with less success.) Abortion is promoted in terms that leave out any mention of the act at the center of the controversy: it’s about “choice.” Life? What life? As for the issue of how a nation maintains its security and rule of law when foreign citizens are entering the country in violation of those laws at will, the news media, like the President and others, works to make the central issue invisible. Continue reading

Unethical Quote of the Month: Jeb Bush

Well , there goes the "smart Bush" theory...

Well , there goes the “smart Bush” theory…

“Yes, they broke the law, but it’s not a felony. It’s an act of love.”

—-Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, in comments about illegal immigration delivered at an event the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library,.

The statement by Jeb Bush has its sunny side, I suppose: with any luck, it should ensure that we don’t have a Bush-Clinton contest in 2016. Maybe that was Jeb’s intent. Otherwise, his comments are irresponsible attacks on the rule of law, common sense, fairness and national sovereignty.

The whole, mush-headed, contradictory, absurd quote:

“There are means by which we can control our border better than we have. And there should be penalties for breaking the law.But the way I look at this — and I’m going to say this, and it’ll be on tape and so be it. The way I look at this is someone who comes to our country because they couldn’t come legally, they come to our country because their families — the dad who loved their children — was worried that their children didn’t have food on the table. And they wanted to make sure their family was intact, and they crossed the border because they had no other means to work to be able to provide for their family. Yes, they broke the law, but it’s not a felony. It’s an act of love. It’s an act of commitment to your family. I honestly think that that is a different kind of crime that there should be a price paid, but it shouldn’t rile people up that people are actually coming to this country to provide for their families.”

Seriously, Governor?

Continue reading

Unethical Tweet of the Month: Actress Eva Longoria

 

Longoria tweet

Emilio Vicente, a gay illegal immigrant from Guatemala who is a candidate for  student body president at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is now facing a run-off after receiving 41.08 percent of the vote.

He may or may not have been helped in his quest for the position by the above unsolicited tweet by actress Eva Longoria of “Desperate Housewives” fame. As far as anyone knows, she has absolutely no connection to Vicente or Chapel Hill. However, she knows he will be a “great leader” and is inherently a better candidate and more qualified than opponent Andrew Powell, who has the damning and disqualifying characteristics of being white, straight, law abiding and an American citizen. Vicente, however, is supremely qualified to lead because he is Latino, gay and illegal.

This is pure, undeniable bigotry, but politically correct, left-endorsed bigotry, so Longoria, who was the Democratic Party’s embarrassing 2008 co-campaign chair-–“war on women,” don’t you know—will never be criticized for it by the morally superior progressive establishment,  though her tweet is as indefensible and un-American as it is legalistically stupid.

I am officially declaring war on racist, bigoted, stupid women….like Eva Longoria.

_________________________

Pointer: Chris Plante

Sources: Daily Caller, Campus Reform,

 

Ethics Dunce: California

Oh, rats. There goes my head again...where's the duct tape?

Oh, rats. There goes my head again…where’s the duct tape?

The reductio ad absurdum of the debate over illegal immigration has reached its apotheosis in California, where Governor Brown actually signed into law a provision allowing illegal immigrants to be awarded licenses to practice law in the state. The law was designed to render moot the case of illegal immigrant Sergio Gomez, who was brought into the country as a child, managed to evade detection and enforcement through law school and the bar exam, and is now fighting to be admitted to the California Bar.

Garcia has said that being able to obtain a law license “is my life’s dream come true. One of two. I’m going for the U.S. citizenship next. I want to be a full part of this country.” Well, why stop at that bizarre sequence? Why not let Mexican citizens first become U.S. lawyers, and then aspire to sneak over the border some day and become U.S. citizens? Continue reading

Are Republicans Really Opposing The Senate Immigration Reform Bill Because They Fear The New Americans Would Be Democrats?

If they think like Ann Coulter, they do.

And that is disgusting.

Lookin' good Ann! And talking bad...

Lookin’ good Ann! And talking bad…

I’m sure Coulter has written in the same vein, but I refuse to read her sometimes amusing but uncivil rants—and they are all rants. Caught in a traffic jam on Route 50 in Arlington, however, I heard her verbal rant on Sean Hannity’s radio show, and of course Sean aped her sentiments, which are roughly these:

It’s outrageous and stupid for Republicans to support a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who are already here, because they and their relatives will all vote Democratic, and within ten years, that will mean that GOP will never win another election.

The short answer to this is: So what?

So what if the new American don’t like the Republicans? That is not a reasonable, fair or ethical reason to withhold a path to citizenship, if a path to citizenship is the best and fairest course for all concerned. I thought that the conservative objections to “amnesty” were principled, and based on the rule of law: it’s wrong to allow scofflaws and cheaters to benefit from their wrongdoing. That would be true if every single former-illegal was a Ronald Reagan worshiper, and a group as dedicated to principle as the opponents of so-called immigration reform claim to be would oppose giving potential Republicans an un-earned pass to the voting booth as vociferously they would block an illegal immigrant Hillary Fan Club.

Is this really all that the opposition amounts to ? A self-serving effort to avoid adding votes to the Democratic column? Continue reading

Ethics Quiz: The Strange Case of the Illegal Lawyer

“Hey Fred! Here comes your attorney!”

Sergio Garcia was brought across the Mexican border into California, at the age of 17 months, by his illegally immigrating parents. Thanks to the muddled and inconsistent enforcement of its immigration laws, Garcia graduated from Chico State University, a Florida law school and passed the California State Bar exam in July 2009., all while being in the country illegally. Now a special committee of the California Bar has recommended that he be licensed to practice in the state, but the California Supreme Court has reservations, and wants to read briefs on the issue. That issue is also the Ethics Alarms Quiz this weekend, and I must admit, it is a question I never thought would rise to status of a debate:

Should an illegal immigrant be allowed to practice law? Continue reading

Dear Alabama Farmers: Am I Sorry That You Are Inconvenienced By Enforcing The Law And No Longer Have Sufficient Illegal Immigrants To Exploit? No.

It continues to boggle my fairly unbogglable mind to see how many illegal immigration apologists and open-border advocates regard these kinds of stories as support for not enforcing immigration laws.

This is from a news item by Jay Reeves of  the Associated Press:

“Some Alabama farmers say they are planting less produce rather than risk having crops rot in the fields a second straight year because of labor shortages linked to the state’s crackdown on illegal immigration. Farmers interviewed by The Associated Press say they had no choice but to reduce acreage. They fear there won’t be enough workers to pick crops at harvest time. The crops are often picked by Hispanic migrants, both legal and illegal….” Continue reading

Explain to Me Why We Tolerate Illegal Immigration, Again?

Yes, I'm in a rotten mood today! Wanna make something out of it??

My cranky Saturday continues with an issue that I increasingly find bewildering: the tolerance, denial, and enabling by so many Americans of illegal immigration, although its unethical character cannot be denied or argued away. I know why Democrats support it—pure electoral cynicism—and I know why the business community encourages it—greed. What I don’t comprehend is why anyone else with a modicum of logic, fairness, and common sense isn’t confronting both of these self-serving institutions and demanding real enforcement of anti-illegal immigration measures. Instead, we get outrageous legislation like the Maryland Dream Act, which institutionalizes incentives for aliens to defy our laws. Continue reading

Flashback: “What Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax Can Teach America”

The Late Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax

[Not many people were checking in on Ethics Alarms when I wrote this post in response to yet another example of bystanders choosing to do nothing when a human being was in peril. Some of the comments to the Alameda post, those making excuses for the 75 faint-hearted or apathetic citizens in that city who would rather gawk at a tragedy than try to stop it,  caused me to recall the essay, which explores related issues.  I wrote it, but I had nearly forgotten about the story; when I re-read it today, I got upset all over again.Here, for the second time, is “What Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax Can Teach America.”]

The one with the premium-grade ethics alarms bled to death on the sidewalk. The people who never had theirs installed at all took pictures. Is this the way it’s going to be? Continue reading

Ethics Dunce: Texas State Rep. Debbie Riddle

 

Look up "Ethics Dunce" in my dictionary, and this picture is under it.

The “Ethics Dunce” designation was invented for people like Texas Republican state Rep. Debbie Riddle.

 

She has proposed one of the many anti-illegal immigration bills currently being considered in the Texas state legislature. Her brainchild, and I use that term generously, is House Bill 2012. Man, it’s tough! It  would punish those who  “intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly” hire unauthorized immigrants with penalties up to two years in jail and fines of up to $10,000.

Riddle does have what she considers a reasonable exception, however. She believes it is dastardly to hire illegals, rewarding their disregard of our immigration procedures and willful violation of our laws, and creating an incentive for others to do the same…unless they are hiring a maid, a lawn caretaker or another houseworker! Continue reading