Russ Bynum/AP promotes illegal immigration (Stillmore, Georgia)

Russ Bynum of the Associated Press offers "Immigration raid cripples Ga. town" (link). It describes immigration raids that took place in Stillmore, Georgia and it does so in such a highly biased and emotional fashion that it should be considered little more than pro-illegal immigration proganda:
Trailer parks lie abandoned. The poultry plant is scrambling to replace more than half its workforce. Business has dried up at stores where Mexican laborers once lined up to buy food, beer and cigarettes just weeks ago.

This Georgia community of about 1,000 people has become little more than a ghost town since Sept. 1, when federal agents began rounding up illegal immigrants.

The sweep has had the unintended effect of underscoring just how vital the illegal immigrants were to the local economy...
We're informed that the "vast majority" of employees at the Crider Inc. poultry plant were "Mexican immigrants"; if the effects are to be believed than the vast majority of those were illegal aliens. In fact, out of 900 employees at the plant, around 600 couldn't or decided not to prove they were working legally.

Rather than reporting on such massive law-breaking and such a massive subsidy from Georgia's residents to a chicken processor, Russ Bynum of the AP writes propaganda designed to support further law-breaking. A question for the "liberals": who ultimately profits from such propaganda?

As if that wasn't bad enough, there's even this quote from Mayor Marilyn Slater:
"This reminds me of what I read about Nazi Germany, the Gestapo coming in and yanking people up."
Don't worry, that's not the first time similar things have been said about those simply trying to enforce our immigration laws. There are similar example from South Jersey nurseryman Chris Ruske, a Florida immigration lawyer, a UFW representative, UCLA professor Steven Bainbridge (in a strawman), and Anna Arias, a member of Ed Rendell's State Advisory Commission for Latino Affairs.

On the wider issue, this AP article is very similar to another "ghost town" story from a couple months back: Molly Hennessy-Fiske/LAT promotes corruption in Arkansas; Huckabee.

The usual question: if "reform" passes, won't the AP and the LAT simply output similar propaganda if some small town mayor or chicken processor is affected?

UPDATE: The email addresses for Russ and his editor are given here [1]. However, I'm pretty sure he's spelling his name wrong, so make it RBynum@ap.org instead.

Also, I stopped reading the article around about the time ol' Russ violated Godwin's law, so I missed this bit near the end ("liberals" should especially spend some time thinking about this part):
The poultry plant has limped along with half its normal workforce. Crider increased its starting wages by $1 an hour to help recruit new workers.
------------------- [1] thedustininmansociety . com/blog/?p=250

Comments

When a problem like illegal immigration is allowed to exist for a long time, people adapt to it and learn to profit by it. When the day of reckoning and reform comes, someone will get caught in the middle. There will lots of complaints. Too bad-it has to happen.
We should never have allowed this country to get to this point. However, we have to face all of this because it is now or never. Entire industries and towns like Stillmore, have allowed themselves to become hooked on the narcotic of cheap, illegal labor. That has to end. The fate of this nation is far more important than whatever disruption we have to face.
Oh, and to the person who thinks deporting illegal immigrants is like what the Nazis did to their own people and the people of conquered nations-get a brain.

Bias, tendentiousness, mm-mm good! We reports it that way 'cause we likes it that way!

"Imagine them reporting the shutdown of a mining or logging town by environmental rules newly enacted or enforced, as reminiscent of the gestapo."

Correct, John, and neither do they report in a similar fashion the closing of businesses that can no longer compete because they refuse to break the law by hiring illegal aliens and the loss of jobs to US workers as a result of such hiring. During the height of the housing boom with new houses sprouting up like mushrooms, construction workers had a higher than average unemployment rate. This rate doesn't even take into consideration the number of such workers who are no longer counted as "unemloyed" but who are still not working full time in their profession. Needless to say, the majority of these are not men who have chosen to go back to college and get a degree in accounting, nor are they women taking a break to raise children. They are often the primary or sole support of a family.

It is very one-sided and propagandistic, to pretend that the net taxpayer does not exist, and that illegals do nothing but good.
Imagine them reporting the shutdown of a mining or logging town by environmental rules newly enacted or enforced, as reminiscent of the gestapo.
There is always a place that is more affected than others by changes in public policy.
That's why it's wrong not look at the net effect on the net taxpayer and on the overall level of aggression in the society, and from the standpoint of the citizen, not the foreign criminal and those who feed on him.