May 08, 2005
The NY Daily News is a repeat offender, having published other PIIPPs ("pro-illegal immigration puff pieces") in the past. Their latest (
"Best & brightest in bind") starts with this:
Carlos will graduate with honors from Brooklyn College next month with a mathematics degree. It's a subject he loves and hopes to teach one day to elementary school students...
The tear-jerking story goes on to explain that he's "undocumented", and thus won't be able to find a job. Then, after trying to engender as much "liberal" guilt as possible, it includes an ad for the anti-American DREAM Act:
CUNY administrators are hopeful that U.S. lawmakers will resurrect the Development, Relief and Education for Minors (DREAM) Act. Introduced in 2004 by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the bill would allow undocumented students who entered this country as minors to apply for a conditional green card, provided they go to college or enter the military.
"We have a choice to either keep these talented young people underground, or give them a chance to contribute to the United States," Hatch told The News. "I believe that our laws should not discourage those with bright, young minds."
Nowhere in their story is it pointed out that there's only so much money to go around. Every discounted college education that an illegal alien receives means one less discounted college education for a U.S. citizen.
To restate that: the DREAM Act says that illegal aliens should get a better deal than our own citizens. It is quite simply an explicitly anti-American piece of legislation.
Please contact the NY Daily News and suggest they consider their journalistic reputation before expelling junk like this: editor *at* nydailynews.com
See the other posts in this category for examples of pro-DREAM Act PIIPPs published in other papers. For more on the DREAM Act, see
"Orrin Hatch's anti-American DREAM Act gets closer to passing",
"Kansas City Star: Let U.S. citizens eat cake", and
"Twenty-Four Americans Challenge Law, Claiming New Policy Discriminates Against American Citizens". And, see
"Where do PIIPPs come from?" for a similar but non-PIIPP article.
UPDATE: The email I sent the NYDN included the following:
Maybe some day some newspaper will write the real story: how do things like this end up in newspapers?
Perhaps you wouldn't mind telling me. How exactly did this article come about? Did someone at CUNY or an "immigrants' rights group" pitch it to you? Or, did one of your editors read about the DREAM Act and they thought it was a good thing without realizing what it really does?
As you might expect, I didn't receive a reply.
See also the newer post
"N.Y. Daily News, Albor Ruiz: Lying, Misleading, Joking, or Telling the Truth?"
Posted to Immigration_piipps at May 8, 2005 07:44 PM
Comments
This kind of article is pretty much standard fare now -- you see them in papers all over. And most are quite similar: they provide one or more 'up close and personal' profiles to show you the human side of the issue, to tug at people's emotions.
And of course no one could be completely unmoved by such appeals.
Only when a reader goes further with the implied thinking, rather than just feeling (the initial reaction), do the problems arise. Naturally it is assumed (or so it seems) those profiled should not be arrested and deported -- their lack of documents is the root problem, and we should fix that by giving them documents. Or should we? If we did, then the need for in-state tuition would be moot, wouldn't it? I mean, once they are legally resident, they are, well, legally resident. Then where is the problem? And if we, or the federal government, does not give them documents? Then state taxpayers would be subsidizing people who are not legally resident. Which does not seem to make a lot of sense.
So all of this -- 'undocumentedness', college, getting a job, etc -- argues for legalization. Amnesty. Also known as complete abandonment of immigration law. Because once you shrink from enforcement, you in effect have no law.
Or are we to decide who can be legal and who not based on how well they do in school?
Posted by: eh at May 9, 2005 03:57 AM
This is not the only article in which Albor Ruiz distorts the truth; just about every one does. Anyone who is in any kind of a struggle with undocumented aliens are the subject of his yellow journalism. He has written several misleading articles about landlord Steven Kessner and the sham group, the Movement for Justice in El Barrio. These people are not only in the country illegally but are squatting in and overcrowding their apartments, with the help of the city. His articles are really laughable and his sensationalism only hurts the causes he espouses.
Posted by: Len at October 23, 2006 11:49 AM
Victor Caletre has been deported. That is hard to do in New York city where illegal aliens have as many or more rights than its legal citizens. Generally speaking, you have to commit a crime. Caletre, along with his partner in crime, Juan Haro, was a founder of the sham organization Movement For Justice in El Barrio. This organization’s claim to fame is its captive reporter, Albor Ruiz, who writes biased, distorted and untruthful stories for the Daily News under the guise of reporting the news. They are further supported by another sham organization, Housing Here and Now, which has its own gang of reporter lap dogs. They have tapped into an activist writer for El Diario whose daughter has written the same kind of rhetoric for the Village Voice. Shamefully, they also have a New York City Councilwoman in their pocket, East Harlem’s Melissa Mark Viverito, the wealthy German socialite, who lives in a $1,000,000 townhouse, masquerading as an Hispanic from the neighborhood, and whines about gentrification. In his article about alleged abusive landlords, Ruiz seeks to characterize the Movement’s fight against landlord Steven Kessner as a Samson versus Goliath type of battle. The reality is that the Movement for Justice in El Barrio is a gang of thugs who are victimizing their own people. Housing Here and Now is no more than an outlet for rants against landlords in general. What Caletre and Haro are doing is enabling illegal immigrants to be crowded into small apartments like herds of sheep. While Victor Caletre was falsely crusading against Steven Kessner, he was renting an apartment from him, in which he did not live. Instead he in turn rented his small two bedroom apartment to nine adults who paid him rent. In ranting and raving about abusive landlords, these organizations are seeking to divert attention from their shameful pursuit of the almighty dollar. Steven Kessner, who is one of the victims here, has only been attempting to clean up his building and reduce the unlawful overcrowding. Since that would have an adverse impact on the pocket books of the people who are preying on these unfortunate immigrants, they are desperately trying to stay in business, any way that they can. Victor Caletre is out of business. Hopefully, Haro will be soon, Steven Kessner will win his fight against illegal overcrowding and the media circus will end, or at least move on to villifying someone else.
Posted by: Concerned Citizen at November 16, 2006 11:27 AM
