Nancy Pelosi: immigration enforcement separating families is "un-American" (Luis Gutierrez, Kelly Zito)

Kelly Zito of the San Francisco Chronicle offers a heavily-biased, untrustworthy article ("Pelosi: End raids splitting immigrant families", link) about yesterday's "National Family Unity" event in San Francisco. That's part of a national tour designed to press for comprehensive immigration reform that's sponsored by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and led by Luis Gutierrez.

Because Zito doesn't provide full quotes and because she doesn't even once use the word "illegal" or even "undocumented", it's not clear just how stupid the remarks from Nancy Pelosi were:

"Our future is about our children," Pelosi told a crowd of mostly Latino families at St. Anthony's Church.

No matter if those families arrived two days ago or centuries ago, Pelosi said "that opportunity, that determination, that hope has made American more American."

She said, "Taking parents from their children ... that's un-American."

The easy way to show how Pelosi is wrong is to point out to her that the parents put themselves in the situation with their eyes open. They broke our laws and put their children at risk. Pelosi should ask those parents what they were thinking instead of blaming our laws. And, someone could point out to her that the "taking" is easily cured by the whole family returning to their country where at least the parents are citizens. And, someone could point out that it's horrific public policy to encourage mixed-status families, which her policy would do. Someone could present to her the example of a parent who's sent to jail making knock-off jeans. Is enforcing our laws against making knock-offs "un-American" as well?

What most people don't seem to realize is that Pelosi could have been easily discredited over this issue if someone had been there to ask her questions like that. An illegal immigration-supporting hack like Kelly Zitto isn't going to ask those questions; she's too busy trying to mislead people into thinking that we're dealing with legal immigrants. That leaves it up to us to ask those questions. I've been posting things like that for over two years, so maybe eventually others will take notice and do something.

3/18/09 UPDATE: This story is now getting some attention due to a Fox News story (link). There's a transcript of some of her remarks here; those remarks are on this video.

On this video she says, "The raids must end... the raids must end". She mentions SCHIP, which results in a loud cheer; another loud cheer follows when she discusses fighting to lift the five-year wait to receive benefits. She promotes them repeating their sob stories to the president and in the halls of congress.

On this, Walter Coleman (aka "Slim", protector of Elvira Arellano) wants people to fill out petitions listing their problems to be given to Obama. He, of course, hides his support for illegal activity behind a religious veneer.

Gutierrez takes an ahistorical swipe at WASPs and engages in the immigration tradition fallacy on this video.

Note that back in October 2003, Pelosi traveled to Mexico and accused her own government of conducting "terrorizing" immigration raids.

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Sun, 03/08/2009 - 11:08 · · Importance: 9