Stupid Americans
This is the Frito Bandito
This is the mayor of Los Angeles.
Both were created by Americans.
How Stupid are the US Media?!?!
Open letter to CNN and other mainstream US media outlets:
1. The vast majority of Hispanics/Latinos in the U.S. (75 percent of us) were born and raised here, including many of us who have roots here that predate the arrival of the pilgrims.
2. "Immigrant" is not synonymous with "Latino" and the media should stop pretending they mean the same thing.
3. The CNN analyst who said today "Keep in mind, Latino voters are LEGAL immigrants, not illegal immigrants" should be FIRED for sloppy thinking. MOST LATINOS ARE NOT IMMIGRANTS AT ALL, PINCHE CABRON.
4. Immigrants to contemporary USA come from EVERYWHERE. There are, for instance, 100,000 Nigerians in Houston, and tens of thousands of ILLEGAL Irish in Boston. If this debate is truly about immigration, as opposed to racist portrayals of Latinos, please curb your coverage to be more responsible.
5. Just because someone waves a Mexican or Colombian flag at a peaceful demonstration does not mean the demonstration is a "riot" or the people unAmerican. Lou Dobbs should get his panties out of a knot and realize it is no different than someone waving an Irish flag in Southie or an Italian flag in Queens. These flags are not waved as proof of national allegiance; they are waved in solidarity with a person's cultural heritage.
6. You can be a Mexican American and never have had an ancestor come over the US border; vast portions of the United States of today USED TO BE MEXICO or SPAIN. If you failed to learn this in high school, your teachers should be fired.
7. The vast majority of Hispanics/Latinos in the US speak English as a first language. The Pew Center for Hispanic research shows that by the third generation, all Latin American immigrant descendents - 100 percent of them - are English-first, English dominant. Zero percent speak Spanish as a first or primary language by the third generation.
8. The US has TWO international borders, not ONE. To date, not a single terrorist has gotten to the US through Mexico; to date, at least two suspected terrorists have arrived here through Canada. In fact, I would not be surprised if, while the media and xenophobes are focused on the Mexican border, terrorists figure out that it might be a good idea to walk over from Vancouver to Seattle for a latte.
9. Not all Hispanics/Latinos are Mexican or of Mexican origin in the U.S., and most people of Mexican extraction in the US were born in the UNITED STATES.
10. Please check for plans to give Haliburton the contract to build a wall along the Mexican border before caving in to the right-wing propaganda about a "crisis" in immigration from Mexico.
11. Please be careful when you discuss these issues not to stereotype or overgeneralize. The anti-Latino frenzy you're creating is leading to a racist backlash against tens of millions of native-born Americans who happen to have Spanish names.
12. The following are also Spanish names: California, Arizona, Florida, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego. Why does CNN allow states, cities and rivers with Spanish names to be American, while disallowing American people with Spanish names the same right...?
13. Please tell us what the problems are that are caused by illegal immigrants. Don't just say there is a "debate". Tell us in concrete terms what the risks and dangers are being brought to the US by "illegal" immigrants. Can't find any? Thought so.
14. Please remember that the least legal and least assimilable of American immigrants were...the English. And the only people who can claim to be true "Americans" are Native Americans.
15. Most Mexicans are Native Americans.
16. Shut up about this non-issue and get back to BEING JOURNALISTS, covering the REAL issues, like the illegal war in Iraq and the lies that got us there; the record-setting trade deficit; Bush's bankrupting of America; NSA's illegal wiretapping of American citizens; the fact that our public schools are MORE segregated than they were before Brown vs. the Board of Education; the fact that we as a nation have now slipped to having only the 27th freest press in the world; the Plame leak and the consequences of it being that Americans are much less safe than we were before Cheney and his friends played "revenge"; the disappearance of the American middle class and unions; the sorry state of the FAA; the rapid devaluation of the American dollar on the world market thanks to idiot leaders; the dismantling of the endangered species act by our administration; the rapid and unprecedented rise of a white underclass (the fastest rise in poor whites in American history has occurred under Bush); the enormous and growing gap between rich and poor in America.
All best,
Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
Oh yeah, you know how they turned out 500,000 people in LA?
Spanish-language radio.
How many people live in the US?
295,734,134
What are we debating, 11 million, about three percent of the US population. Someone posted what would happen if we had 30 million immigrants. Well, it would probably make them about 6-7 percent of the US IF there is a normal increase of US population.
Remember, every child of an immigrant born in the US is an American, regardless of the parent's status.
If the GOP could add, they would have realized that they would be alienating a massive number of voters. Far more than 11 million people.
You know, I think a lot of this is driven by numbers, 11 million sounds large, but it isn't, if it was an ethnicity it would be under Asian Americans ,who are six percent of the US. But compared to 295 million, well it's hardly Attilla the Hun.
So how many Angelinos are there 3,819,951
500,000 is about one of every eight city residents and Latinos make up 46.5 percent of the city population. So of the people who marched, more than one of four Latinos in LA marched, and it may be up to half, if estimates of a million are accurate.
Now, think about that: you have just pissed off millions of people, MOST of whom can vote.
This seemed like a smart play over the poll numbers, but in reality, it just gave the people most affected a reason to hate the GOP forever. Tom Tancredo doesn't see families here, just brown people. Would you vote for a party which wanted to make your 70 hour a week working cousin with two young kids a criminal? I don't think so.
posted by Steve @ 12:56:00 AM
