December 22, 2007

Jay Newton-Small/Time misleads about immigration (Huckabee, Tancredo, INS)

A minor example of how Time magazine and the rest of the MSM mislead and/or don't understand immigration issues is presented in "Tancredo's Single-Issue Victory" (link):

...By basics [U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo] means forcing all illegal immigrants to go home and reapply to enter the country legally if they want to return, making English the national language and denying municipal services for illegal aliens such as driver's licenses, Social Security benefits and state-subsidized education. Huckabee has come under particular fire for backing college-level grants for the children of illegal immigrants in Arkansas. "We are a better country than to punish children for what their parents did," said Huckabee, defending his stance, in a Florida debate last month...

Tancredo has announced he is also not running for reelection for his Congressional seat. His immediate plans, he said, are to hang out with his grandkids, stump for Romney and finish his last year in office. After that, who knows? Romney may one day need to appoint a head of Immigration and Naturalization Services.

1. "forcing" would seem to imply some form of mass deportations; Tancredo actually supports attrition which might be better described as "encouraging".

2. I don't believe Tancredo supports ending "state-subsidized education" for K-12, especially since that was decided on by the Supreme Court (thanks to Peter Schey). He does oppose college-level discounts for illegal aliens.

3. Huck's program, as discussed at the link, was irrespective of their parents' status(es), and that misleading formulation has been used many times in the MSM. Even the WaPo has corrected that formulation.

4. Jay Newton-Small includes a quote from Huck, but as with Joseph Berger of the NYT he doesn't include the response from Mitt Romney regarding discounts being a finite resource.

5. The INS hasn't existed for over four years.

Posted to Immigration2007b at December 22, 2007 11:35 AM