According to an article on cnn.com: “Immigrants are another target of hate groups, according to the report. In a deteriorating economy, illegal immigrants have been blamed by hate groups for allegedly taking subprime loans, according to the report.”
This is no great surprise. According to a report released by the Southern Poverty Law Center, for the past decade, Hate Groups have been fueled by the issue of illegal immigration. Their anger has now shifted towards the fact that there is a Black President in office and lost jobs due to the weak economy.
A great deal of the debate over illegal immigration in the past few years has given hate groups an opportunity to thinly disguise their hatred of certain minorities with the “socially acceptable” issue of being against “illegal immigration” as undocumented aliens could, at least in theory, be blamed for their own actions, such as entering the country unlawfully, overstaying or working without authorization – even if, according to anti-immigrationists, the “offenders” were brought to the US by their parents when they were as young as two years old. Some “journalists” have gone to great lengths to use isolated examples of crimes committed by a few undocumented aliens and extrapolate these incidents to refer to these people as “criminal illegal aliens”. Moreover, well-known, organized groups that oppose illegal immigration frequently favor limiting or ideally eliminating immigration altogether. “Illegal” is again just an easy target and the term “illegal alien” has gained so much traction over the years that the mainstream media now use it regularly.
There are valid arguments worth considering on both sides of the immigration debate. Unfortunately, when hateful, emotional rhetoric replaces thoughtful, rational dialogue – we end up with a chaotic, malfunctioning immigration system that politicians are either afraid to touch or that they and certain cable and radio broadcasts use to “rev up” the far-right base of what is becoming the “no we can’t” party.
