Sunday, June 27, 2010

The DNR Continues it's Immigrant bashing .....

The Daily News Record: Editorial Opinion


So Boys and Girls....  What's the reason for the Arizona law?

  • Is it because the crime rate is to low? [News flash: Crime rates and prison incarceration among legal and illegal aliens is lower (actually MUCH lower) than among the native population.]

"The problem of crime in the United States is not “caused” or even aggravated by immigrants, regardless of their legal status. This is hardly surprising since immigrants come to the United States to pursue economic and educational opportunities not available in their home countries and to build better lives for themselves and their families. As a result, they have little to gain and much to lose by breaking the law. Undocumented immigrants in particular have even more reason to not run afoul of the law given the risk of deportation that their lack of legal status entails." -source and source
  • Is it because immigrants both illegal and legal are an economic burden for natives? Is it because they use services they can't and don't pay for causing hardships for citizens?
Immigrants, both legal and illegal, pay taxes. They get jobs, they seek education, they add to the cultural richness of society, and they help the economy. The benefits to the economies of the states with high immigrant populations is at worst a wash at best a pretty good benefit. The relatively small price, economically, of immigration just doesn't support the level of caterwauling coming from the opponents of immigration reform. Finally, it's just a myth that immigrants take jobs away from natives. You can check the "small price" link for that one too. In this case, mythically true = statistically insignificant.

  • Is it because some folks feel threatened by the rise of the new immigrant population and that they have much invested and therefore much to lose in terms of status, privilege and wealth?
Do ya think?

Amusing.....

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

The Coming Caliphate and other tales of the Arabian Nights

The Daily News Record: Editorial Opinion

In reading the recent editorials in the Forum section, I'm wondering if the writer truly intends to be taken seriously. In "The Coming Caliphate" [DNR Editorial, June 7, 2010] the writer reflects on a scene that might have come straight from the famous tales of the "Arabian Nights." The Arabian peninsula and allies must be poised to support an insurrection of mythical proportions, enough so that we must be warned of the coming Holy War, according to the writer.

Certainly this and other recent anti-Islam editorials must be attempts at political humor, for if it is to be taken seriously, who exactly is to be warned? Are we to arm ourselves? Is the writer advocating the profiling of all Muslims? or their expulsion from the land of the free and the home of the brave? Just how seriously does he believe that a state of war exists with all proponents of the Muslim faith? Exactly who is at war with whom?

I'd like to give the writer the benefit of the doubt on all of these "Arabian Nights" tales. He must have been swayed by that famous American thinker and political humorist, Glen Beck, who famously said, "Anyone who believes anything I say is an Idiot."