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Four Immigration Myths and the Credulous Media By Steve Sailer

Having written 292 VDARE.com columns over the last six years, I'm inundated by feelings of both satisfaction and frustration when reviewing this year's Congressional and media debates over illegal immigration.

To their credit, House Republicans and much of the blogosphere get it. (See, for example, postings by Untethered, Udolpho, Parapundit, Mickey Kaus, Glaivester, Your Lying Eyes, Pytheas, Chris Roach, Face Right, 2Blowhards, and Mean Mr. Mustard.)

And yet in the more insulated institutions, the Senate and the legacy media, ludicrous falsehoods long ago exploded on VDARE.com and elsewhere are still proffered as if they were indisputable fact.

The lack of accountability and integrity in the mainstream press is striking. A pundit, once established, can apparently propagate nonsense catastrophic to America for years without paying any career price for his incompetence or bad faith.

The appalling legislation approved in the Senate Judiciary Committee with the support of four foolish Republicans (and of all the Democrats, of course) is the unsurprising outcome of the risks I've long pointed out in the Bush-Rove strategy.

A Bush victory in 2004 was always going to hinge on turning out the non-Hispanic white majority in vast numbers. But that was too politically incorrect to explain to the media, so, it appears, the White House concocted a smokescreen operation bamboozling innumerate reporters into believing that the small Hispanic vote would, somehow, be the key to the GOP victory.

When the Administration finally revealed its open borders immigration plan in January 2004, it pointedly excluded previously illegal aliens and new guest workers from becoming citizens (i.e., voters), precisely because a majority were sure to vote Democratic.

Hilariously, Bush announced he was dead-set against "amnesty." He redefined the word "amnesty" so it no longer meant forgiving lawbreakers for their crimes and allowing them to continue to reap the benefits of their lawbreaking. Indeed, doing exactly that was an essential part of the Bush plan. In a special Humpty-Dumptian sense aimed solely at Republican Congressmen who don't want Democratic-leaning illegal immigrants to get the right to vote, Bush redefined "amnesty" to mean only "giving citizenship to illegals." ...

But as I wrote in February 2004 about the cynicism of Bush's plan to institutionalized a new class of disenfranchised helots:
"But Bush's new Machiavellianism automatically cedes the rhetorical high ground to the Democrats, who are already pushing for 'earned legalization' (i.e., giving illegals the vote). Bush is left contradictorily sputtering about how wonderful immigrants are and how we don't want them to become our fellow citizens." One notorious problem with lying is that you start to believe your own lies. So, for the benefit of GOP Senators, let's review some of the most common myths about the political impact of immigration that are constantly retailed in the prestige press, even thought they were shot down years ago on VDARE.com: [More]
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer