A Response the Bias of Local News Reporting

While Spokane’s citizens were celebrating the beginning of spring with the annual Blooms day Race, protesters in Seattle were pounding the pavement demanding that discrimination against immigrants in education, housing and employment cease. A Seattle news station reported on the event but offered little insight into the motivation or demands of the protest participants. (see http://www.nwcn.com/news/Immigration-Rally-Tackles-Discrimination-121035689.html). The article in question ended with a quote from Craig Keller, part of the “Respect Washington” group that staged a counter protest on Sunday. He stated that all U.S. citizens should be treated equally, but when it comes to ‘illegal’ immigrants, “The taxpayer subsidy to illegal aliens must stop. The answer for illegal aliens is to make themselves legal by returning to their county of citizenship.”

I'd like to point out a couple things about this article. One, the reporter does not convey the national and historical context of May Day labor protests. The activists of the labor community have been utilizing May first for almost a century; and the date represents a platform for unions and other labor organizations to broadcast information and activism about a critical subject to all of us, our rights as employees. Instead the articles focuses exclusively on the local protest activities of a group organized by La Raza, a predominantly Latino organization. This focus limits the articles ability to connect the local groups demand to the national crackdown on unions and employee rights. The article presented a limited view (as only a Latino protest) of the discrimination experienced by racial minorities, immigrants and women-all marginalized workers, while setting the stage for a truncated debate on immigration; a debate that focuses on illegal immigrants as an economic and social ‘problem’ that can be solved by mass deportation. Rather than writing a well rounded article on the workers’ rights, opening debate and discussion on this subject, the articles use of the Craig Keller quote at the very end initiates a one-sided comment frenzy about how undocumented immigrants are a strain on the U.S. economy and social services and should deal with unsafe working conditions or go back where they came from. This brings me directly to my second issue.

The way the article ended with the quote from Keller suggesting that the solution to the immigrant ‘problem’ is the deportation of 11 to 12 million people. This invites people to respond to the article in narrow-minded and simplistic terms of understanding immigration, legal or otherwise. Why do we blame immigrants for doing the same thing all our ancestors did? Most people assert that we are all are descended from immigrants, who faced the same barriers in getting here and becoming successfultherfor the same to all who want to come here now, right? Perhaps not.

Initially, there were no laws regulating immigrants coming to American and no one to enforce them. That’s how the earliest settlers were able to enter the region and take the land from Native Americans. The initial settlers were privileged in comparison to today’s immigrants in that there was no law to bar their entry and the races (what we would now condsider the 'white' races) entered unrestricted, later immigration laws were developed to restrict minority groups like Asians and Latinos from gainng citizenship. Legal and ‘illegal’ immigrants are doing the same that most (white) people historically did to get to and succeed in America- they are making the journey, finding a job and living their life here.

The article from the King 5 station that I am referring to garnered many comments by web viewers, comments that suggested that immigrants here without documentation are without rights and deserve to be treated like criminals or worse. The recent federal decision to charge undocumented immigrants with felonies helps to criminalize a group that is already deprived of rights within the U.S. because of their noncitizen status. The criminalization of people who enter this country the same way many ancestors did, without the permission of those already living here, may indicate that we are thinking and acting under a flawed assumption that immigration laws are consistent and are an unbiased reason for excluding undocumented immigrants citizenship.

More broadly though, this article reinforces the usual get-out-of-our–country rhetoric that epitomizes the immigration debate, rhetoric which focuses on blaming the immigrants rather than questioning the structure that compels immigrants to make a life threatening journey to gain employment in unsafe working conditions where they face unnecessarily low wages and racial or ethnic discrimination. This rhetoric never asks why illegal immigrants are so desperate to get away from their native countries that they risk their lives to come here. While inserting the fear that illegal immigrants reduce jobs available to citizens, this rhetoric never questions why there are less unskilled jobs in general, creating more completion for crappy jobs and fueling the discord between races and ethnicities. When more people are familiar with the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Central American Free Trade Agreement and their impact on the Mexican and global economy, then we can better understand that the reason undocumented immigrants are here looking for work is the same reason that many Americans are out of work. Jobs that used to employee the US's middle class have been transferred by corporations and big business to countries with more easily exploitable labor forces, devaluing or destroying the local econnomy and driving their standard of living down, causing the immigration that society is complaining about.

We should all stop blaming immigrants who just wants to feed their family and start understanding the ways that our national policies and global economy has increased the demand for undocumented immigrants in the U.S. job market and contributed to the push factors that influence their decision to leave their home.