Click here to download the entire The Economic Impact of the Hispanic Population on Long Island as a printable PDF
Lat week, the Anti-Defamation League put out a report on mainstream anti-immigrant groups' increasing utilization of strategy and rhetoric borrowed from less-mainstream hate groups, dehumanizing Hispanics and demonizing immigrants.
From the ADL website, announcing the study:
"Under the guise of warning about the impact of illegal immigration in the rush to thwart the immigration bill from becoming law, some anti-immigrant groups reached for the playbook of hate groups," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. "They have taken hateful and racist rhetoric and brought it into the mainstream."
Titled "Immigrants Targeted: Extremist Rhetoric Moves into the Mainstream," the report had some interesting (but unsurprising, for those of us who've been paying attention) findings about methods used by anti-immigrants groups in the media.
In analyzing their media presence and statements, the ADL found these common factors:
- Describing immigrants as "third world invaders," who come to America to destroy our heritage, "colonize" the country and attack our "way of life."
- Using terminology that describes immigrants like insects, as part of "hordes" that "swarm" over the border.
- Portraying immigrants as carriers of diseases like leprosy, tuberculosis, Chagas disease (a potentially fatal parasitic disease), dengue fever, polio, malaria.
- Depicting immigrants as criminals, murderers, rapists, terrorists, and a danger to children and families.
- Propagating conspiracy theories about an alleged secret "reconquista" plot by Mexican immigrants to create a "greater Mexico" by seizing seven states in the American Southwest that once belonged to Mexico.
The report highlighted some familiar anti-immigrant groups from around the country, including Mothers Against Illegal Aliens, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, Choose Black America, You Don't Speak for Me, Americans for Legal Immigration Political Action Committee, Grass Fire and The Dustin Inman Society.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform released a study today, in fact, claiming that there are now at least 13 million undocumented immigrants in the country, up from 7 million in 2000.
The FAIR press release, incidentally, opts for a disease-ridden/insect strategy: describing areas where immigrant populations have only recently become substantial as having previously been "virtually immune" to the "explosive growth" and "mounting burden" of immigrant communities.
And in local news, one more threatening noose, complete with a racist epithet pinned to the Styrofoam head around which the noose was attached, was found outside a Valley Stream man's home.
Which brings what might look like an esoteric discussion of semantics home: when the mainstream media seeks the expert advice and input of organizations that describe large segments of our communities as disease carrying insects swarming our neighborhoods, as criminals out to get our children, as subhuman saboteurs set to destroy the American Way, people listen.
And when that kind of hate fueling rhetoric permeates national dialogues, it also permeates the nation's conscience and consciousness, manifesting itself as hate filled actions in our communities.