Anti-immigration nut-wings sell fear, but fear reason

As an example, check out this doozy from one of our former U.S. presidents:

The laws should be rigidly enforced which prohibit the immigration of a servile class to compete with American labor, with no intention of acquiring citizenship, and bringing with them and retaining habits and customs repugnant to our civilization. - Grover Cleveland, First Inaugural Address (Wednesday, March 4, 1885)

Sound strangely familiar to the venom now being spewed forth by the anti-immigration forces of today?
So as the battle heats up over the effort to allow millions of human beings now here in this country from south of the border, working to feed and clothe their families (but without the proper cards being marked by the bureaucracy), it is best to remember that propaganda and bigotry have long been the tools of despot emperors who have no clothes.

Once the law is changed to respect the Mexican immigrants' contributions to the American society, as has been done in the past with respect to other immigrant groups, even in Cleveland's time, the “illegal” immigrant argument also will have no legs. That is the biggest fear of the xenophobic crowd - that they will no longer have any argument to make beyond propaganda and bigotry.

Until then, however, we have to deal with unsourced screed like this, from a nut-wing, nonprofit group called Family Security Matters:

While President Bush and US Senators continue to fiddle with their open borders amnesty policy, also known as the ”Immigration Reform” bill, the US military is warning its personnel and civilian employees not to enter Mexican border towns. Chillingly, this warning also includes US towns located along our southern border. Towns on the Mexican side of the border, and perhaps those on the US side as well, are increasingly being controlled by Mexican drug lords and their cartels.

These same drug lords have placed death-bounties on both our US border patrol agents and US military personnel. Unconscionably, our leftist mainstream media is neither reporting this nor the facts that open warfare is occurring, on a daily basis, along large portions of the US-Mexico border.

Mexican illegals are, on a regular basis, burning down portions of the ecologically-sensitive Coronado National Forest to create diversions; so that drug dealers and other illegals can cross unfettered into the United States. Where is the outrage from the supposed environmentalists? It's nonexistent. Are the arsonists accepted because they're assumed to be from the politically-correct race - no matter what they do? Apparently so.

A casual reading of this propaganda would lead the average reader to believe that U.S. troops are being prevented from protecting the border due to the dirty tricks of that “repugnant,” “servile” group of people south of the border — who of course are all criminals at heart in the eyes of the xenophobes.

But this so-called news reporting, which has been picked up verbatim by a variety of anti-immigrant nut-blogs, appears to be quite naked propaganda when stripped of its cloak of fear mongering.

In April, the U.S. State Department did issue the following in a travel warning related to Mexico:

This Public Announcement advises U.S. citizens on security situations in Mexico that may affect their activities while in that country. This Public Announcement supersedes previous Public Announcements for Mexico dated January 18, 2007 and September 15, 2006. This Public Announcement expires on October 16, 2007.

Narcotics-Related Violence - U.S. citizens residing and traveling in Mexico should exercise caution when in unfamiliar areas and be aware of their surroundings at all times. Violence by criminal elements affects many parts of the country, urban and rural, including border areas. In recent months there have been execution-style murders of Mexican officials in Tamaulipas (particularly Nuevo Laredo), Michoacan, Baja California, Guerrero (particularly Acapulco), Nuevo Leon (especially in and around Monterrey) and other states.

Though there is no evidence that U.S. citizens are specifically targeted, Mexican and foreign bystanders have been injured or killed in some violent attacks demonstrating the heightened risk in public places. In its effort to combat violence, the Government of Mexico has deployed military troops in various parts of the country. U.S. citizens are advised to cooperate with official checkpoints when traveling on Mexican highways.

So it does appear flawed Mexican and U.S. drug policy is producing some violent blowback. But the State Department clearly states that “there is no evidence that U.S. citizens are being specifically targeted.”

So to conflate the drug war and the immigration issue is little more than a ploy to generate fear among the U.S. populace and to cynically propagate anti-immigrant sentiment. For further analysis of the real forces behind the drug war in Mexico, check out this link. You will see the violence is not about “immigration,” but rather about greed and power in the illegal drug trade and the corruption it fuels on both sides of the border.

If the U.S. military is, in fact, warning soldiers to stay away from the border, it is likely in the context of the State Department's travel advisory related to drug-gang feuds, and not pegged to a fear of “violent” immigrants crossing the border to work in the United States, or any “ecological” concerns — since the Mexican side of the border has long been contaminated with the stench and sewage run-off from the failed promise of NAFTA.

But bigots will not let a little thing like context get in the way of their propaganda.

And what is that context?

To begin with, it is the National Guard (not the generic “U.S. military”) that now has some 6,000 troops stationed along the border to support the mission of the U.S. Border Patrol.

So the nut-wings must be talking about the National Guard in stoking the embers of fear by implying that the border is so violent (even on the U.S. side) that the U.S. military is afraid to tread its soil, right?

That would be a big story, if only it were true.

But it seems the facts might get in the way of the propaganda in this case.

For starters, given that it is the National Guard now assisting the U.S. Border Patrol with security along the border (not the U.S. Army or Marines), any so-called "U.S. military" warning to stay away from border towns must certainly apply to on-duty National Guard troops, correct?

Otherwise, it would seem such a warning, if it indeed was issued, would almost certainly only affect off-duty troops, when those soldiers, just like you and me, are simply visiting an area as U.S. citizens — the very same people targeted by the State Department travel advisory.

In any event, it makes sense for anyone, off-duty soldiers and even noncitizens, to be wary of bullets flying if they happen upon a gang-war shootout -- whether that plays out in Mexico or on the streets of a U.S. city (because, as we all know, this country is not immune from drug-war violence either).

Just to make sure of the facts, Narco News contacted both the National Guard and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which oversees the Border Patrol, to ask them to weigh in on the nut-wing report.

However, contrary to what the nut-wing propaganda implies, Manny Pacheco, spokesman for the National Guard Bureau in Arlington, Va., said he is not aware of any National Guard warning or order being issued to troops to stay away from the border.

It seems even the State Department travel advisory is not particularly relevant in the case of the National Guard's mission, because the troops participating in the deployment don't really have a lot of spare time to party on the border, according to Pacheco.

“They [the troops] are stationed from 5 miles to 100 miles off the border and move around depending on the missions, and typically troops are rotating in and out every couple weeks, so they don't have time for sight seeing,” Pacheco says.

Likewise, Ramon Rivera, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection, says his agency has issued no warning or other instructions to the National Guard encouraging their troops to stay out of border towns. He adds that other than the National Guard, he is not aware of any other U.S. military support operations assisting Border Patrol at this time — and, after all, it is the Border Patrol that “patrols” the border.

So it would appear that the border security operations of the Border Patrol and the National Guard are not being disrupted due to fear of “illegal immigrants" — or any other “repugnant” or “servile” peoples.

But then the point of anti-immigrant propaganda is not to communicate the truth, is it?