July 16, 2007

Jean Pfaelzer is what's scary about the immigration debate

Jean Pfaelzer - professor of English and American Studies at the University of Delaware - offers "What's Scary About the Anti-Immigration Debate" [1]. It's so over-the-top and full of lies that I'm trying to debate whether it's a parody. It doesn't even deserve much of a discussion, since it reads like the rantings of a Hollywood street person, albeit one who's a pathological liar:

...Hazleton's mayor told Sixty Minutes about a 70% rise in violent crime since Latinos came to town in 2001 (the correct number is 20 of 8,500 crimes). Farmers Branch, Texas said that the code would prevent terrorist attacks by purging its Latinos. One third of towns that passed the code are in unemployed areas of Pennsylvania--railroad towns that once sold anthracite coal, steel tubes, and carpets. Now they export Latinos... These gentlemen prefer blondes. The mayor wants Hazleton to remain 94.7% white. Last week in front of a burning cross the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party, recently defunct, announced to ABC Evening News that since they began assaulting, torching, and "bleaching" Latinos, membership has risen 40%...

The "bleaching" part refers to one incident from May. Somehow I doubt that even those groups admitted on camera that they systematically engaged in those practices. And, I'm pretty sure she's mischaracterizing the comments of Hazleton's mayor, Lou Barletta, as well as the comments from those in Farmers Branch. Shouldn't George Mason University's History News Network consider its credibility and at least verify a few of the things they publish?

Please send them an email and suggest they print a retraction of the various lies and mischaracterizations in her article: editor *at* historynewsnetwork.org

[1] hnn.us/articles/40316.html

Posted to Immigration2007a at July 16, 2007 11:08 PM