Bill O'Reilly v. Latinos

by: Jay Stevens

Thu May 31, 2007 at 13:21:11 PM MST

O'Reilly: Now on the left. The objection is, there's not enough illegal aliens in here. The New York Times wants open borders, they want all 12 million legal, people who will be legalized, to bring in their extended families, not just wives and children, but moms and dads, brothers and sisters. This would lead to, by my calculations, 40 and 50 [million] foreign nationals being absorbed into the United States in the next 12 to 13 years.

That would sink the Republican Party, I believe. You'd have a one-party system, and change, pardon the pun, the whole complexion of America! Am I wrong?

McCain: No, you're right. The second thing on the left they're against, is the temporary worker, as you know. We say two years, go back for a year, come back for two years. They don't want that, they don't want them to have to go back -

O'Reilly: You understand, I'm not saying this in a condescending way, you're smarter than I am, but do you understand that the New York Times wants, and the far left wants, they want to break down the white, Christian male power structure - which you're a part, and so am I - and they want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically break down the structure that we have? In that regard, Pat Buchanan is right.

Whoa.

Yeah, I want to "break down" the "white, Christian male power structure." I think women, people of all ethnicities, and folks of all religions and non-religions should have equal access to the gates of power. Our society should be a meritocracy, and we should fight for equal opportunity for all.

Second, I don't see any concerted or organized opinion about immigration on the left. Immigration reform is not as big an issue with progressives as it is for the paleo-conservatives and their imaginary culture wars, that's why not many of us post about it.

I did write about the issue long ago, and I think those observations still stand. Amnesty's inevitable, because nothing else is practical. And if the growing Latino population heads towards the Democratic party and the left, it's because it was shoved there by rhetoric like O'Reilly's, in which he clearly reveals that his end of the ideological spectrum will not give Latinos a chance because of...their language? skin color? traditions and culture?

Which is a shame, because there are reasonable conservatives (and liberals) who oppose immigration reform for more practical and realistic reasons, because of basic national security and the threat of terrorists who might slip in across an unsecured border. That's a legitimate concern, and one that I share. Unfortunately those folks are being drowned out by O'Reilly-like conservatives.