Recently in Immigration Category

Here's a link to an academic study about bias in the news media relating to immigration reporting. The gist of the paper is summed up this way by the PR department at Rice University:

A new study released by Rice University in Houston finds that California newspapers located closer to the border of Mexico routinely provide a more negative slant on immigration in general news reporting and on their opinion pages than the state's newspapers located further away from the border.

The study, "Slanted Newspaper Coverage of Immigration: The Importance of Economics and Geography," was conducted by Rice University political scientist Regina Branton and Johanna Dunaway of Louisiana State University and published in the Policy Studies Journal.

Using content analysis, geographic information systems and contextual data, Branton and her research staff examined 1,227 California newspaper news articles and opinion pieces from 2004-05.

"We found that newspapers located closer to the Mexican border often report the more negative side of the immigration issue," Branton said. "Moreover, we found corporate-owned newspapers are more likely to report a negative slant to the issue than privately owned newspapers."

Branton said that the reason for the difference is that newspapers are trying to please their audience - the readers - and thus maximize profits.

"While all news organizations are driven somewhat by the need to make profits, a public group of shareholders seeks to maximize profits and considers that the main goal," she said.

"It's been well-documented that the media report heavily on sex, violence and crime to appeal to readers," she said. "The immigration issue is an emotional national issue that newspapers can sensationalize and provide influence on."

Holy cow! Newspapers want to appeal to readers by writing about things that readers are interested in? You don't say! God forbid that newspapers would try to please their audience and maximize profits. The horror...the horror.

Here's a news flash, professors: the entire dadgum newspaper industry is wobbling on its last legs! And you are not only shocked, but offended that newspapers struggling for their lives would actually, you know, try to create products that actual readers would pay cash money to read?!

Somewhere, a turnip truck is bumping along without two of its passengers.

Moreover, how do these academics figure that border newspapers that report the "negative" side of immigration more often than papers away from border areas are somehow guilty of slanting the coverage? Isn't it at least possible that the reporters and editors covering the story from border areas see aspects of the story that reporters and editors who live farther away do not? Isn't it at least possible that the impact of immigration on, say, the people around Laredo is substantially different from the impact on the people of Dallas, and that could account for differences in news coverage?

My friend and combox regular Bill Holston, a Dallas immigration attorney, e-mails news from his day (so far) at the office:

I tried an Ethiopian asylum case this morning.

My client was imprisoned for five years, opposing the Marxist Dergue, then upon his release was involved with a series of political parties, seeking democratic rule in Ethiopia. My client was imprisoned four times for political activism. He was kept in overcrowded, filthy jails, becoming sick from drinking untreated river water, because that's what was given to them. He was beaten to unconsciousness on one occasion.

Each time on his release, he was warned not to continue his pro-democracy activities. In 2006, he distributed fliers with the photos of imprisoned party leaders from the CUD, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy, the Kinegit. He was arrested and taken to jail for this simple act.

I asked him, "Sir, you had been repeatedly warned not to participate, and to stop your political activities. Why, despite those warnings, did you continue?"

With tears in his eyes he said, "For my children. There is a price for liberty. There is a cost for freedom, and that's why I kept doing that."

Every American should see this. It's among the most inspiring things.

The Judge granted asylum. I knelt in the parking lot of the Federal Courthouse and without shame said a prayer of thanksgiving.

This 62 year old man, thanked me, and hugged me. Damn fine day at the courthouse. I left and thought, "Everyone should get to see this."

Amen. What Bill accomplished, and what his client accomplished back in Ethiopia, reminds of me of something Father Arseny once said, as recounted by a former Soviet labor camp prisoner who knew him in the camps:

Father Arseny opened up a new life for me, he brought me to God, and he recreated my inner self. This is why now I want to say what is essential about him. One can talk about him endlessly, because his deeds have no limits, and these deeds boil down to God and love -- the love he feels for people in the name of the Lord.

I remember his words: "Before dying, each person must leave something behind, must leave a trace of some kind. Be it a house built with his own hands, or a tree he has planted, or a book he has written -- but whatever it is must have been done not for himself but for other people. Whatever your hands have created will be the mark you leave after your death. People will look at what you have made, or at what you have planted, and you will live again in bringing them joy, and they will remember you and ask the Lord to bless you. What you make is not the important thing, but what is important is that what you have fashioned becomes better than what it was before. It will contain a spark of yours if you have made it in the name of God and of love for others.

"The most important thing," said Father Arseny, "is to help others, alleviate their suffering, and pray for them."

For the second time in a week, I've had what I'll call a "Howard Ahmanson Moment" -- the feeling that I, as a cultural and religious conservative, have more in common with illegal aliens than with many of my own countrymen.

(I call it a Howard Ahmanson Moment WRT the Religious Right philanthropist's decision to leave the GOP for the Democrats . I know Howard feels pretty close to Latino immigrants, at least, because they tend to be religious and cultural conservatives, and that he doesn't like what he identifies as "nativism" on the Right.

Anyway, you'll remember, perhaps, my story about "Maria," a hard-working Dallas woman, once an illegal immigrant but now a citizen, who makes a pilgrimage every year to pray before the Our Lady of Guadalupe tilma to thank her for protecting her during her (illegal) voyage to America during the 1980s. I was moved by Maria's story, and her faith, and surprised by how moved I was. I can't say I really know Maria, but I do know her employer quite well, and she loves Maria, and depends on her. I had come to admire her work ethic, at least from what I'd see, and that made me see her in a different light when I found out she'd come to this country illegally.

Well, guess what happened yesterday?

I'm going to tell you a little story about something that happened to me last week. I'm not sure what to think about it, so don't draw any conclusions about what I think, beyond what I tell you here. But it's been on my mind since it happened.

Last week I had the chance to talk to a woman I'll call Maria. She's a citizen of the US, but an immigrant from Mexico. I know the lady who employs her, and know that Maria is a hard and dependable worker. I've been chatting with Maria whenever I go by there for the past year or two.

Anyway, when I saw her last week in the workplace, I asked Maria (who is Catholic) if she'd heard about Hillary Clinton's faux pas in front of the tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Maria hadn't, but got a good laugh out of it.

"You know," said Maria, "I go there every year, in Mexico City, to thank her."

"You make a pilgrimage every year to see the tilma?" I said.

"Yes, to thank her," said Maria. "In 1982, I came to this country without papers. Before I left, I prayed to her for protection. All the way, I prayed to her. Several times, I passed border guards and the police, and they never stopped me or checked my papers. It was a miracle. We were so poor in Mexico. I became a citizen in 1987, and now my family is here. This is a great country. That's why I always go back every year to see her, and to tell her thank you."

I gotta tell you, I was touched by this story, even though I have pretty strong views about securing the border. I don't back down off my view that our border ought to be far less porous. But knowing Maria slightly, and listening to her story about faith and her passage to America, the thought occurred to me that above all, I want to be on the side of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I'm not saying she was definitely on Maria's side, understand, though I completely get why Maria believes that. But whatever side of the immigration question La Guadalupana is on, that's where I want to be.

Counting the cost of limousine liberalism in Britain:

Labour's immigration policy turns out to have been a very effective campaign tactic in the class war - only with the twist that, in this case, Labour has been on the side of the haves rather than the have-nots. The wonderful thing about dramatically increasing immigration in the way Labour has done over the past decade is that advocates of that policy can present it to themselves not as a way of forcing down the wages of the poorest Britons to the great advantage of the employing classes, but as an altruistic attempt to help the impoverished of the developing world. They see it as an exercise in compassion and social justice.

Advocates of unrestricted or very high levels of immigration into Britain often seem simply to have deluded themselves into portraying what is actually a piece of economic self-interest as high-minded philanthropy. Still, underlying the question of how many people from developing economies we should welcome into Britain, there is a very fundamental issue about the basis of rights, and who owes how much to whom.

On one side, there is the rationalist, universalist view, which says that the basis of rights and entitlements is "human-ness" - and that morally, every government should treat every human being in exactly the same way. On the other, there is the view that governments can never be more than the guardians of the interests of the particular group of people who elect them and contribute to them. That is why, as a member of a particular nation, you have a right to a voice in deciding what laws govern your society, but outsiders do not. It is also why you also have an entitlement to benefits that is not universally shared.

Labour's policy on immigration has been based on the rationalist, universalist view. That is why its immigration policy, with its insistence that every immigrant has exactly the same rights as long-standing members of British society, has come into such sharp collision with the views of the white working class. They think that the Government should recognise that it has special obligations to its own citizens which it does not have to humanity in general. They, along with most of the rest of us, are sceptical of any politician who claims to be following "universal reason", especially when the "rational policy" requires sacrifices from people who are not politicians. Most British citizens think that the British Government has no obligation whatever to extend to arrivals from Third World countries the benefits to which only being a citizen entitles you.

Obviously this person is a racist whose views deserve nothing more than condemnation. Move on folks, nothing to see here.

Evangelical churches may be seeing their populations growing in bad times, but one population may be shrinking: the population of Mexican nationals living in the United States, both those here legally and those here illegally: Layoffs, dwindling job opportunities, anti-immigrant...

Suppose you are a regional director of Homeland Security, Customs, and Border Protection in Boston. Would you hire an illegal immigrant to be your housekeeper? Would you hire some of her friends, also illegal immigrants? Would you give them advice...

A decade ago, when I lived in South Florida, it was fascinating to observe how much nationalist rivalry and prejudice there was among Latinos. To generalize, the Cubans, who were at the top of the power hierarchy, were despised by...

Two years ago, hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens and their fellow travelers marched in big cities coast to coast, demanding legalization, or somesuch thing. Yesterday's rallies attracted only a tiny fraction of that number (in Dallas, the number was...

I heard from a Catholic friend today who spends a lot of time doing charitable work with the poor in his city. Given where he lives, that often means Mexican immigrants. He's pretty conservative in his faith, but thinks political...

From the Dept. of Speaking Inconvenient Truths, a Mexican consular official in San Diego confronts protesters last week, and speaks his mind: "This has been, and will be, Mexico." Got it. Useful to get that learnt. (H/T: Maximos, who remarks...

Fantastic, and fantastically infuriating, column from Tony Blankley about this asinine border security charade the Bush administration has just put us through. Excerpt: Technical problems with the same 28-mile project that Secretary Chertoff personally had vouchsafed were cited by Homeland...

Jorge Arbusto is going to import more of the Mexican peasantry to pick crops: The Bush administration today plans to announce the most significant overhaul in two decades of the nation's agricultural guest worker program, in a bid to dramatically...

Victor Davis Hanson speaks uncomfortable truth to Republican candidates: It is easy for the Republican candidates to claim they are against amnesty, and, indeed, we all should be, given how the 1986 act only made the problem much worse. But...

Illegal immigration is McCain's Achilles heel, and he came off as weak on this issue (well, weak to this conservative). Man, the emerging theme from tonight's debate is, Let's kick the crap out of Mittens. Romney is making substantive, credible...

As he explains in this column, Philip J. Hubbell used to live in a middle-class north Texas suburb. Property values had been going up. The neighborhood was ethnically mixed, and even had gay couples living in it. And this was...

Sorry to belabor this, but I want to thank Mark Krikorian for saying this on The Corner about the "Texan of the Year" hoohah (I haven't put the links into Mark's original comments; follow the link in the previous sentence...

The Dallas Morning News editorial board blog is being overwhelmed by comments, almost all of them furious, at the paper for naming the Illegal Immigrant as Texan of the Year. It's clear that the readers are ignoring all the information...

By the by, I agree with City Council member Tim O'Hare from the Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch, who told me for the DMN essay: We have thousands of homes where the values are under $200,000, and many of them...

Lawrence Auster is going medieval on me because I wrote the Dallas Morning News essay naming the Illegal Immigrant as "Texan of the Year." Even though the piece is not signed -- and in fact appears in the newspaper labeled...

We have a cleaning lady who comes once a week, usually, for a few hours. Maria is a legal immigrant from Mexico who has been in this country for about 30 years. She came as a teenager. She is an...

Whoa! He's gotten all super-badass about the illegals. Hey, I really like the new, improved, populist Huckabee position on immigration. But it's kind of a flip-flop. Will these anti-illegal immigration leaders give Huckabee a second look now? Or can Huckabee...

The University of Texas Medical Branch has a problem. It's suffering a budget shortfall, and is considering a proposal to quit offering cancer treatment to new indigent patients who are illegal aliens. From the story: About 5.4 million Texans, or...

The Center of Immigration Studies has a new study out today on the illegal immigration situation, based on US Census data and using analytical methods accepted by the Pew Hispanic Center, the Dept of Homeland Security, the Census Bureau and...

It seems that our government's recent moves to get a bit tougher in enforcing the immigration laws has caused a significant downturn in illegal immigration from Mexico. Gosh, who'da thunk it? There are some sad individual stories too, like this...

The Dallas suburb of Irving has been participating in a federal program under which local police departments who arrest suspects for other alleged violations, but who cannot prove that they are in the country legally, call US immigration authorities. If...

In the penultimate Democratic presidential debate, Hillary Clinton slipped and stumbled on the answer to a question involving the granting of driver's licenses to illegal aliens. She was promptly sandbagged by the other candidates, particularly her most serious challengers, Barack...

Via Mickey Kaus, here's Andres Oppenheimer's Miami Herald column predicting that the illegal migrants in the US might start rioting if the immigration situation isn't worked out soon. Excerpt: Remember the Palestinian intifada of the early 1990s, when thousands of...

A couple of hours ago former Mexican president Vicente Fox came by for an editorial board meeting. The meeting started 10 minutes earlier than scheduled, and I, caught unaware, showed up to find the door blocked by the SRO crowd...

My Sunday column about the Mexican consulates and their role in promoting illegal migration. Excerpt: The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas calls these remittances "an important source of income and stability." No doubt, but why should Americans enable the dysfunction...

Today's Dallas Morning News reports that the government of Mexico is ramping up efforts with its consulates in the US to advocate on behalf of migrants here. Excerpt: The move comes as deportations reach an all-time high in the toughest...

In the Dallas inner-ring suburb of Irving, police officers making routine arrests turn over suspects who can't prove their citizenship to federal immigration officials, who deport them. Man breaks the law, man gets caught by cop, man is shown to...