Julia Preston can't or won't follow the money and power (Mark Shurtleff, New York Times, immigration)

In April, Julia Preston of the New York Times offered "A Die-Hard Conservative, but Not on Immigrants" [1] about Utah's former Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, a supporter of illegal immigration.

The article is a bit like how a worthy country cousin might be introduced into East Coast high society; in this case that high society is the illegal immigration-supporting establishment.

Among other things, it also shows that Julia Preston can't or won't follow the money and power on illegal immigration supporters. She writes:

[Shurtleff] thinks [initiatives like Arizona's SB1070] are based on misinformation. "That it is an actual invasion of our country by criminals, that 80 percent of Latinos commit violent crime and all this other nonsense you hear, people believe it," [2] Mr. Shurtleff said. "And it's because there hasnโ€™t been a good voice to the contrary telling the truth about it."

Mr. Shurtleffโ€™s truths are nurtured by like-minded groups in Utah. After Arizonaโ€™s law passed in 2010, an e-mail chain started among an odd coalition that included Mr. Shurtleff and the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce, local police chiefs, farm bureaus, Latino leaders, Democratic lawmakers and the Roman Catholic Church.

Now, if you've read this or similar sites for even 10 minutes, you'll know that such a coalition isn't that "odd" at all. What those groups (and the Mormon Church) have in common is that they're corrupt: they support illegal activity in order to gain money and/or power:

* the Catholic Church and the Mormon Church want new parishioners...
* the Chamber of Commerce wants to keep wages low through increasing the labor supply and wants additional consumers...
* the farm bureaus want cheap labor...
* Latino leaders want race-based power (and sometimes money)...
* the Democratic Party also wants race-based power...
* Shurtleff and the police chiefs want race-based power just like the Democrats.

Figuring that out isn't rocket science. Yet, Preston isn't enough of a reporter to ask any of them about it. Or, she's just a hack trying to mislead those few who can't connect the dots.

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[1] nytimes . com/2012/04/02/us/politics/
utah-attorney-general-is-die-hard-conservative-but-not-on-immigrants.html

[2] I've been covering immigration for almost a decade and I've never heard anyone say anything close to "80 percent of Latinos commit violent crime". Most such strawmen at least have a grain of truth, but Shurtleff just made that one up. Some people do refer to illegal immigration as an invasion, and it does have some aspects of a soft invasion (McCain, Oppenheimer; see also the U.S. military command). Of course, that's another thing corrupt hacks like Preston and Shurtleff would try to sweep under the rug. And, regarding the "good voice" part, that quote is appearing in the New York Times, home to a string of pro-illegal immigration hacks like Preston and Nina Bernstein. Shurtleff isn't in touch with reality.