I’m a big fan of the approach that Lou Dobbs has taken to covering Illegal Immigration over the past few months and years - in fact I strongly believe he provides the most balanced coverage of the issue of any major news program - and I truly appreciate that fact. Now that he’s extensively criticizing the way most mainstream media handles the issue, I think he’s finally raising some issues that need to be raised. I’m not one to make predictions, but I hope others listen to him and stop the excessive appeasement of Illegal Aliens, the ACLU, and the Illegal Immigration Lobby.
That said, he has offered similar views in the past, but to see it in a concise and through segment is very pleasing. Among my favorite points:
“They’re selling an agenda. And they’re not applying critical judgment. And critical judgment and skepticism is our job as journalists. We’re talking about comprehensive immigration legislation as reform. We’re using the word ‘reform’ as if it were true. There’s no skepticism.”
Exactly. Calling what they want to reform is like calling a major heart attack or a ruptured cerebral aneurysm a ‘minor medical problem’ - it’s simply idiotic and everyone knows it.
And the fact that the president of the United States, the fact that the Congress of the United States, and the Democratic leadership, particularly in the Senate, could put this legislation before the American people — the Flake-Gutierrez bill, 700 pages of utter nonsense that, frankly, no one in Congress has read. But it’s an absurdity. It’s amnesty. It would cost this country a fortune. And for what? The issue is secure borders. The issue is not 12 to 20 million illegal aliens in this country. The issue is enforcing the law.
Any bill that needs 700 pages cannot be anything but nonsense. I bet more than half is pork and amnesty. Why can’t we have a bill to secure the border without amnesty or faulty funding?
We need immigrants in this country. That’s why we bring in more than two million. Has anybody over the past hour on this broadcast or this network reported, or any other network, reported that we bring in more than two million immigrants into this country lawfully each and every year? Has anybody on this broadcast, any news organization in the country, said, wait a minute, why in the world are we worrying about illegal immigration into this country and their — and their situation, before we’re worrying about how long it takes to become a lawful immigrant in to this country and what we’re doing with people who are playing by the rules? This is upside down. It’s wrongheaded. And it is simply, to me, a travesty that mainstream media journalists are not focusing on the facts.
I agree, we are a nation of immigrants and a healthy stream of immigrants is needed to maintain our status as the greatest nation on the planet. On that note, however, we don’t need millions of illegal aliens coming here and picking our fruit ro cooking our burgers - we need engineers and PhDs.
Check out the rest of the transcript (and a video clip) over at NewsBusters.org