Fareed Zakaria's wonderful, heartwarming, misleading essay on immigration

The TV pundit offers a wonderful, heartwarming, and misleading essay in "To Become an American".

1. He downplays the issue of illegal immigration, and might give the uninformed reader the mistaken idea that there's little difference between the legal and illegal variety.

2. By doing the first, he might give uninformed readers the mistaken idea that the question is about whether to allow immigration in general.

3. He provides a quote from Stanford historian David Kennedy, which I'm going to assume he got via Samuel Huntington. I believe the quote appeared in Kennedy's 1996 article "Can We Still Afford to Be a Nation of Immigrants?" Oddly enough, FZ didn't know or forgot to tell you that in the same article, Kennedy warns that the "possibility looms that in the next generation or so we will see a kind of Chicano Quebec take shape in the American Southwest".

4. FZ also forgot to mention the goals of the Mexican government.

5. FZ seems also to be - dare I say it - trying to pull the wool over your eyes regarding enforcement. He says we need more border enforcement, but he forgets to tell you that what we really need - and what aren't almost completely not getting now - is workplace enforcement.

6. FZ forgot to mention that around 40% of Mexico's population say that they'd move here if they could. I guess we're going to need to really ramp up legal immigration to accomodate them. Plus, all the millions from other countries who'll come here to take advantage of future amnesties like the amnesty FZ supports.

Perhaps Fareed Zakaria might consider whether articles like this assist his credibility or not.

Comments

This rat is part of the evil of the mexican plan to help bin laden and take us down as a nation its part of the evil doers inside our system.

Comparing illegal immigration to legal immigration is like comparing rape to voluntary sex.

This guy is dangerous. He is justying terrorism in Europe, because Europe did not do 'enough' to assimilate its immigrants! this is like putting a gun on someone's head and saying "accept me or else". this is worse than "give me ur wallet or else".

Nice nice job..surprised this has gone uncontested..it was so misleading.