More smears, lies from the non-liberal L.A. Times
The LAT prints a guest commentary from Tamar Jacoby entitled "Anti-Immigrant Fever in Arizona":
Call it Proposition 187 redux. Last week, backers of a ballot measure dubbed "Protect Arizona Now" turned in petitions signed by 190,887 residents of that state calling for the initiative to be put to voters in November. The local political establishment was stunned. No one had expected the measure, which would deny state services to illegal immigrants, to garner anything like that kind of support - over 50% more signatures than required to get it on the ballot. If the signatures hold up, Arizonans will pick up where Californians left off 10 years ago, in another ugly battle over immigration...
More important, unlike in California, most Republican elected officials appear to be opposed to the measure. No member of the Arizona congressional delegation, or any other statewide politician, has supported it. And business leaders, who understand the value of immigrant labor, are adamantly against, at least in private meetings...
We owe a debt of thanks to Tamar Jacoby. That last paragraph neatly lays out where the problem lies, and who's responsible. Many current Arizona politicians and businesses are opposed to the will of the great majority of the people. Hopefully Arizonans will go against the wishes of the elites.
As for the L.A. Times, one wonders why they would print a guest commentary like this. They are supposedly an unbiased, non-liberal news source. Why didn't they change the headline of the commentary? It's obviously false and inflammatory: "opposed to illegal immigration" and "anti-immigrant" are two quite distinct things. Why didn't the LAT vet some of Jacoby's statements? Is it perhaps because the LAT agrees with her?
I urge everyone to send an email to the LAT's readers rep: Readers.Rep@latimes.com
Printing Jacoby's opinion is fine. Parroting her lies and smears is not.
See also:
Opponents of 'Protect Arizona Now': funded by a check-cashing firm
"Graf rips Kolbe at candidate forum" (Graf opposes illegal immigration)
(Via this)
Comments
John S Bolton (not verified)
Wed, 07/14/2004 - 16:37
Permalink
It is true that they should not have described this movement as anti-immigrant. Other terms are available; such as anti-immigrationist, restrictionist, anti-colonizationist, anti-traitorist, anti-crime and so on. It is propagandistic to say anti-immigrant. Leftists are not called anti-rich. Labor unions are not called anti-manager. Lawyers are not called anti-police. Ethnic organizations of minorities are not called anti-white. Even if some of the above should be called by these names, the anti-immigrationist is against the potential immigrant; not the existing immigrant or resident alien very often. It was attempted to obscure this distinction; in order to rile the naturalized immigrant, perhaps.