(Via New York Times)
“The business community supports the idea that these temporary workers should have the exact same employment protections as American workers,” said Randel Johnson, co-chairman of the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition."
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Tomorrow will mark a new round of immigration rallies across the nation. The always informative Migra Matters has compiled a good list here.
So, what can we expect from mainstream medias coverage these events? Will we once again be shown countless images of protesters waving their Mexican flags and chanting the now all too familiar, "Si Se Puede" and "El Pueblo Unido Jamas Sera Vencido".
As mainstream media is transformed anchors like Lou Dobbs and O'Reillys see a decrease in viewers they seize upon illegal immigration and rant about loss of jobs or immigrant crime, which makes average Americans question, "What part of illegal, don't you get". The fact remains that the majority of Americans are hard pressed to understand the complexities of immigration or how we got into this mess. Now and then undocumented immigrants get a small reprieve from an unlikely hero, as in Geraldo Rivera who stood up to O'Reilly and challenged him for connecting drunk drivers to illegal immigrants.
The increased attention to undocumented immigrants and the crimes they will sometimes inevitably commit provides easy fodder for anti-immigration proponents. It easy for them to cast illegal immigrants and suggest that somehow these crimes would not have occurred had the illegal immigrant not been allowed entry into the country in the first place. It's a troubling trend and the fact that mainstream media does little to counter such reporting is irresponsible. The fact that such news coverage and reporting continues speaks volumes about how much of a strangle hold corporations have over the media.
The brouhaha that results from such news coverage would subside if the responsible journalist referred to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or Mothers Against Drunk Drivers and pulled statistics on the number of drunk driving fatalities and calculated how many were in fact committed by illegal immigrants. It's easier to get mired down in half-truths, blatant lies and let entrenched special interest groups cast undocumented immigrants as the catalyst for the pending fall of The Great American Empire, it's better for ratings and better ratings means more ad dollars.
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