Ken Belson/Jill Capuzzo/NYT: corruption, illegal activity are great!

Posted Wed, Sep 26, 2007 at 8:51 am

Ken Belson and Jill Capuzzo of the New York Times offer a slab of pro-corruption, pro-illegal immigration propaganda in "Towns Rethink Laws Against Illegal Immigrants".

Apparently, Riverside, New Jersey has suffered economically after enacting an anti-illegal immigration ordinance (which they recently rescinded), and the NYT offers the most dire portrait they can:

With the departure of so many people, the local economy suffered. Hair salons, restaurants and corner shops that catered to the immigrants saw business plummet; several closed. Once-boarded-up storefronts downtown were boarded up again.

What about those businesses that weren't seeking to profit from an influx of "immigrants"? How are they doing? That's not answered.

And, there certainly is a lot of money to be made off illegal activity, but whether it's good to encourage that is another thing. There are also the other costs that Riverside doesn't have to pay after "so many" people left, such as increased educational and health costs. And, there are the non-financial costs, such as illegal immigration being an indicator of government corruption. Oddly, the NYT's crack reporters didn't factor any of those costs into the equation.

As for the ACLU, PFAW and others seeking to in effect enrich themselves by bankrupting small towns, this is all they have to say:

Meanwhile, the town was hit with two lawsuits challenging the law. Legal bills began to pile up, straining the town's already tight budget.

Wouldn't real reporters look into the ACLU's activities in this matter in a bit more depth, rather than creating a slanted report designed to apologize for illegal activity?

As for the "victims", they only quote four, all of whom would profit with increased illegal immigration:

Angelina Guedes, a Brazilian-born beautician, opened A Touch From Brazil... Luis Ordonez's River Dance Music Store, which sells Western Union wire transfers, cellphones and perfume... Bruce Behmke opened the R & B Laundromat in 2003 after he saw immigrants hauling trash bags full of clothing to a laundry a mile away... Regina Collinsgru, who runs The Positive Press, a local newspaper, and whose husband was among a wave of Portuguese immigrants who came here in the 1960s.

In her previous report (first link above), Capuzzo spun such wire transfers like so:

[another shop has] a bustling Western Union office, where many of the immigrants can stay in contact with relatives back home...

"Staying in contact" by sending money to their home countries, encouraging corruption in the U.S. as U.S. companies profit from illegal immigration, and incentivizing foreign countries to keep sending us people legally or illegally, that is.

The bottom line is that what Ken Belson and Jill Capuzzo write cannot be trusted; they're simply propagandists for the illegal immigration-supporting New York Times.

Those buying the propaganda include the following:

"Classically Liberal":
freestudents.blogspot.com/2007/09/town-that-threw-out-immigrants-reverses.html

"Thoreau":
highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2007/09/26/7217

David Weigel of Reason Magazine:
reason.com/blog/show/122687.html

UPDATE: From our "self-starters"/reverse assimilation file comes this additional paragraph from the article:

On the town's leafy side streets, some residents admired the pluck of newcomers who often worked six days a week, and a few even took up Capoeira, the Brazilian martial art.

How wonderfully multicultural of them. And in New Jersey too! Compare this snippet from the NYT editorial promoting Mexicanos Sin Fronteras:

You didn't think they [MSF] were just going to roll over, did you? They're immigrants: smart, industrious self-starters, like your grandparents.

Tags: 
reason magazine

Comments

llamajockey (not verified)

Wed, 09/26/2007 - 18:48

For years I helped organize a Ski Racing program out of Chicago. I love how "Classically Liberal" changes the subject from mass illegal immigration from south of the border that is flooding into Chicago to legal immigration from Poland. My experience with Polskis, Bosnians, Kosovars and other Eastern Europeans for that matter is that while they are quick to learn English, they also insist on making sure their children retain the ablity to speak the language of the ancestors. You can find second and third generation Poles and Lithuanians who are fluently bi-lingual. This came up when scheduling races. The Poles always wanted Saturday evening races so their kids who spoke accent free English could attend Polish school in the mornings. So we usually scheduled a few. The fact that Eastern Europeans supported their own language programs blows a huge hole in the argument for pandering for Spanish Bi-lingual education. Are there Polish illegal aliens in Chicago? Yes, and it should not be tolerated. But it should be said there are none of the Ethnocentric radicalism and a minimum of the social pathologies found in other Hispanic groups.

JoeBitian (not verified)

Wed, 09/26/2007 - 21:20

Seems like you are missing the point. This town has learned the hard way what has been obvious to all rational people all along. Illegal immigrants are a necessary part of our modern economy. The insane rhetoric of the right refuses to acknowledge this, and those fools who actually buy into the right's argument, and make real-world decisions based on that logic, soon are forced to come to grips with reality. The underlying problem is simple. A dynamic, growing economy needs unskilled workers. Immigration of unskilled workers is never politically popular - at best people will support immigration of scientists and engineers, but not the poor, hardworking types. As a result there is a serious disconnect between our immigration laws and the needs of the free market. The illegals do us the great favor of solving this self-created problem, by coming to fill those jobs in spite of the immigration quotas. The choices are simple. Either accept the fact that we have screwed up the immigration laws - legalize those here now and set realistic levels for unskilled workers in the future, or, the insane RW response, kick out the illegals, destroy the economy, and blockade the border, to insure that the economy is not only crippled now, but remains crippled in the future.

mary (not verified)

Wed, 09/26/2007 - 21:53

JoeBitian-The town feared bankruptcy thanks to the treasonous ACLU and other enemy invaders working to take over this country.Those unskilled AMERICAN workers do NOT appreciate you giving away their jobs, their culture and their country. Nor do I. Enough jobs have been outsourced , and enough H1B visas imported displacing American workers. THIS IS OUR COUNTRY AND I AM NOT SELLING!!!!

TLB (not verified)

Wed, 09/26/2007 - 22:03

I suspect that JoeBitian is just slightly - just a wee tad - overstating the importance of illegal aliens to our economy. Their output is actually a small part, and if they weren't here we could make do just as we have in the past. And, we'd do better because a) we wouldn't have this issue to deal with, b) we wouldn't have the direct financial costs and other indirect costs, and c) we'd replace cheap labor with innovations and the like. No matter what benefit JoeBitian can come up with from illegal immigration, the costs - such as government corruption - are far, far greater.

eh (not verified)

Wed, 09/26/2007 - 23:00

_Illegal immigrants are a necessary part of our modern economy._ Hey dude, a suggestion for you: leave your fucking house. In particular, take a trip across the country. Drive the \'Blue Highways\' [1]. Know what you'll find? Americans doing the jobs they supposedly don't want to do. Because 'immigrants' haven't arrived there (yet) to pull down wages and working condition to the point where, indeed, your average American doesn't want or cannot afford to do that work. You're a typical clown who wants to focus exclusively on jobs and economic impact without considering how ('corruption', as TLB says) 'immigrants' become an important bloc of the workforce in some locales.

Links:
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[1] en.wikipedia . org/wiki/Blue_Highways

eh (not verified)

Wed, 09/26/2007 - 23:15

Here's a perfect example: airport screeners. Post 9/11 it was decided to federalize that job [1]. After that got underway, the LAT wrote a sneering article [2] bemoaning how Whites were taking a big majority of those jobs, even in places like LAX, where before 99% of screeners were non-white, many recent 'immigrants'. So when that job was changed from a shitty low wage deadend to one that offered decent pay and benefits, Americans showed up.

Links:
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[1] www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/07/0214218
[2] www.sjsu.edu/depts/sociology/living/gma-pawis.html

Tanstaafl (not verified)

Thu, 09/27/2007 - 05:38

Hey JoeBitan, take your anarcho-captilist ideology to heart and migrate your sorry excuse for a brain down to Latin America if you like it so much. You can enjoy your dynamic growing economy down there. Those of us who are rational see your Economy's isn't wearing any clothes. What we see is impoverished thugs ruining the great country we used to have.

Thomas (not verified)

Thu, 09/27/2007 - 07:28

Joebitian, this town's experiences in no way demonstrates that "illegal immigrants are a necessary part of our modern economy." What do you expect to happen when a city experiences such a precipitous change in demographics? Instant readaptation? Our immigration laws have gone unenforced for so long that, yes, many businesses have grown dependent on them. But there is no NEED for them to be dependent on them. Look at Canada, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, Singapore, Finland, Australia, etc, etc. How is it that each of these countries has a strong economy and quality of life comparable to that of the U.S.? They don't have millions of illiterate illegals who don't speak the native language. How are they getting by??!! You think some Latin American country needs to send them illegals or they'll fall apart? The U.S. does not need your kind of globalist moron thinking.

Fred Dawes (not verified)

Fri, 09/28/2007 - 02:31

you best buy guns now.

The Other Mary (not verified)

Sat, 09/29/2007 - 20:43

I just got back from a trip to Seattle which is far less "infested" than Mexifornia. I saw Caucasians doing ALL of the "shit work" jobs in Washington State. We don't need the illegals -- it is THEY who need us, because they are incapable of creating a decent society in their own country. Ship 'em out before they destroy our country.