Immigration

"A civil rights group said today that up to 10 million Hispanics could be blocked from voting in the upcoming election because of these changes to the voting laws. 10 million. And that's just here in L.A."

So quipped NBC Tonight Show host Jay Leno Monday (video follows with commentary):

NewsBusters is showcasing the most egregious bias the Media Research Center has uncovered over the years — four quotes for each of the 25 years of the MRC, 100 quotes total — all leading up to our big 25th Anniversary Gala on Thursday evening.

Click here for posts recounting the worst of 1988 through 2009. Today, the worst bias of 2010: Journalists attack the Tea Party as Nazi “goons;” Arizona’s attempt to thwart illegal immigration is likened to the Nazi occupation of Denmark; and Katie Couric suggests a Muslim version of The Cosby Show as a remedy to American “bigotry.” [Quotes and video below the jump.]

Ted Hesson at ABCNews.com reports that formerly "objective" Washington Post reporter Jose Antonio Vargas is leading a crusade to ban the term "illegal immigrant" from polite news coverage. Or as Hesson puts it, Vargas will "begin monitoring the use" of the phrase "with the goal of shifting the conversation."

"The term dehumanizes and marginalizes the people it seeks to describe," Vargas said. "Think of it this way, in what other context do we call someone illegal?" Since announcing to the world that he's an illegal immigrant, Vargas has become a celebrity activist who's starred in cover stories in in The New York Times Magazine and Time. He wants reporters to use the word "undocumented," and many do.

An Associated Press report by Helen O'Neill time-stamped Saturday afternoon claims that "a record number of deportations means record numbers of American children being left without a parent — despite President Barack Obama's promise that his administration would focus on removing only criminals."

Perhaps the assertion about more parents being forced to leave their kids behind is true. But the "record number of deportations" meme -- a recurring Obama administration claim frequently parroted by the press, despite Obama's other unilateral moves towards de facto amnesty -- is apparently a load of rubbish, based on a review of detailed records by the House Judiciary Committee noted by the Daily Caller's Caroline May on Saturday morning (bolds are mine):

Illegal immigrants get little in the way of welfare or other taxpayer-funded largesse, according to Kirsten Powers. And she's adamant about it.

The liberal columnist and Fox News contributor appeared on Geraldo Rivera's KABC radio show out of Los Angeles yesterday, at the same time Rivera invited GOP strategist George Ajjan. (audio clips after page break)

A write-up with a current time stamp of Tuesday afternoon on how shocked (shocked, I tell you) legal Mexican immigrants and Mexican illegal aliens in the U.S. are that the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) just won a plurality of the popular vote in "their homeland" by the the Associated Press's Julie Watson posited as a fact a statement so obviously false that you have to wonder if she has editors at all.

After finding an 18 year-old (as if a teenager would know) to claim that "I think most immigrants kind of fled Mexico because of the PRI" (it couldn't have had anything to do with better jobs with no responsibilities of citizenship in the U.S. -- no way), Watson presented the following statement as a cold, hard fact:

New York Times reporters have been hammering away at Mitt Romney over his handling of the immigration issue, using last week's Supreme Court decision that unanimously upheld the main component of Arizona's immigration enforcement law to portray him as in an awkward and defensive position with Latino voters (while downplaying the fact that illegal immigration is a lower priority for Latinos than employment).

Campaign reporter Jeff Zeleny said on PBS's Washington Week last Friday that Romney "really took a hard right stance during this Republican primary nomination" on immigration enforcement, and several minutes of Friday's TimesCast were devoted to portraying Romney on the defensive.

Monday's Supreme Court ruling on Arizona law did little to settle the nation’s ongoing battles over illegal immigration. But it did show how ABC, CBS and NBC have eradicated “politically incorrect” language out of their coverage of the debate.

In a span of six years major networks stopped using the terms “illegal alien” and “illegals.” The liberal media’s agenda is clear, and the word "illegal" is now considered a racial slur. In 2006, major networks CBS and ABC used the terms “illegals” and “illegal aliens” in their stories (NBC did not). Today, those terms have all but disappeared from network immigration reporting.

It really is pathetic that MSNBC is allowed to call itself a "news network."

Adding to his long list of falsehoods spoken on the farce of a cable station that employs him, Ed Schultz on Tuesday dishonestly claimed Barack Obama didn't have a hand in killing immigration reform in 2007 (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Though the Supreme Court overturned much of the Arizona law, but not the part the liberals and their media friends loathed the most, it wasn't hard to predict the networks would once again line up with the amnesty lobby. ABC's Diane Sawyer mourned "the most inflammatory part of the law" was upheld.

Once again, those impartial network producers are making themselves the sob sisters of illegal aliens. ABC found a man who carries a document in his glove compartment insisting that if he's deported, his children shouldn't go into foster care. NBC put on a woman watching cartoons with her cute little kids, wearing a T-shirt saying "Arrest [Sheriff Joe] Arpaio, Not the People." Reporter Savannah Guthrie predicted more lawsuits to repeal the one section the court upheld – because liberals never accept defeat. It's so predictable.

You'd think he wouldn't have such persistent trouble with the "illegal" part of that.

Bad enough, as far as "the Rev" Al Sharpton is concerned, that Republicans want to rein in entitlement spending before America morphs into Greece and brings down much the world with it. (video clip after page break)

Fretting over the Supreme Court upholding a portion of Arizona's immigration law, on Monday's NBC Nightly News correspondent Mike Taibbi declared: "[Leticia Ramirez] and her husband have been in this country illegally for over a decade and when she later watched the Supreme Court ruling unfold, she said the verdict, though it only upheld the so-called 'show your papers' part of the law, was still threatening." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Ramirez decried the decision: "It's going to affect the whole community because they're not going to be able to go out, have a normal life. They're going to be afraid that if we go out they might – we might get stopped just for your color." As she spoke, Ramirez wore a t-shirt that read: "Arrest [Arizona Sheriff Joe] Arpaio, Not the People; End Police and ICE Collaboration."

Yesterday I noted that Fox News reported that the Obama administration was ending its program that deputizes local and state law enforcement officers so that they can arrest illegal immigrants. "By Monday afternoon, the Department of Homeland Security had pulled back on a program known as 287(g), which allows the feds to deputize local officials to make immigration-based arrests," Fox reported, adding that "The move means that even if local police step up immigration checks, they'll have to rely on federal officials to make the arrests."

While it's clearly a sign that the Obama administration is intent on doing all it can to not aggressively enforce the nation's immigration laws, the liberal broadcast media greeted the news with a yawn. Neither ABC's Good Morning America, CBS's This Morning, nor NBC's Today noted the Obama administration's decision to kill the 287(g) program.

Appearing on Monday's NBC Nightly News, chief White House correspondent spun the Supreme Court's decision on Arizona's immigration law as exactly what the Democrats wanted: "Well, in crass political terms, today was a day where the Obama campaign was pretty happy with what happened and the Romney campaign was not very happy." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Todd touted liberal cynicism on the issue: "You talk to some Democratic strategists and they say the part of the law that was upheld will only help them motivate Hispanics even more and help them essentially alienate them from the Republican Party."

Cathy Areu, a contributing editor for the Washington Post Magazine, said Monday, "It’s a tough time to be a white man in America where the minorities are really taking over."

This oddly surfaced on Fox News's O'Reilly Factor during a discussion about New York Times columnist Charles Blow comparing Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich to the kids that bullied a grandmother on a school bus last week (video follows with transcript and commentary):

While Arizona's "Show Me Your Papers" provision spawned plenty of controversy, it was still upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court on Monday. But CNN's John King thought it was more than "controversial," blasting the law as "notorious" not once, but twice on Monday.

Near the beginning of the 11 a.m. hour of Newsroom, King called the provision "that one -- and I'll call it 'notorious' – part, the controversial part about 'Show Me Your Papers,' part of the Arizona law left into effect". [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Coming quickly on the heels of the Supreme Court's ruling today in Arizona v. United States that struck down much of the Grand Canyon State's anti-illegal immigration law -- but upheld a crucial provision to check the immigration status of persons held in custody -- the Obama administration announced today that it is ending a program that deputizes local and state police officers to help enforce federal immigration law.

Reports FoxNews.com (emphasis mine):

During an interview with Senator Marco Rubio on Sunday's NBC Meet the Press, host David Gregory hit the Florida Republican for his support of Mitt Romney, who "had to run hard to the right here on illegal immigration" and is "far behind President Obama among Latino voters."

Gregory then quoted from Rubio's new book, An American Son, and proceeded to portray Republican opposition to illegal immigration as racially motivated: "'I begin to wonder if some of the people who speak so disparagingly about immigrants would be just as worked up if most of them were coming from Canada.' You suggest a level of racism here toward illegal immigrants. How much of a problem does the Republican Party have on this issue?"

NBC News political director Chuck Todd said Monday the Supreme Court's ruling regarding Arizona's anti-illegal immigration law "is probably the worst of all outcomes if you’re Mitt Romney."

Such was said on MSNBC's Jansing and Company moments after the announcement (video follows with transcript and commentary):

A common media deception is to accuse Republicans of being anti-immigration.

When Newsweek's Eleanor Clift tried this on PBS's McLaughlin Group Friday, US News & World Report's James Pethokoukis quickly scolded, "They’re anti-illegal immigration. They’re not anti-immigration...That’s just wrong" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

It appears as though Thomas Roberts has joined chorus of MSNBC hosts jumping to the defense of embattled Attorney General Eric Holder over the Fast and Furious scandal.  In an interview with Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), Roberts suggested that Rep. Darryl Issa’s (R-Calif.) investigation into Fast and Furious was simply an example of the GOP having ‘sour grapes’ and looking for an ‘ax to grind.’

Rep. Mica countered the liberal Roberts by noting that MSNBC reporters are acting as apologists for the White House and Holder.  Mica’s comments came following President Obama’s claim of executive privilege to shield Holder from turning over all the documents requested by Issa and the House oversight committee.  [Video follows page break;  MP3 audio here.]

New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter got huffy in a Friday  blog post on behalf of his fellow liberal journalists, who took to Twitter en masse, aghast at the audacity of a reporter from a conservative news site interrupting President Obama's Rose Garden speech outlining his controversial new immigration policy (a version of Stelter's story also made it into print on Saturday).

The Times was kinder to an Iraqi journalist who hurled a shoe at President Bush during a December 2008 press conference in Baghdad, emphasizing his "defiant act" and "hero status" in Iraq.

Chris Matthews on Monday smeared supporters of enforcing America's immigration laws, linking them to the post-Civil War "back to Africa" movement for African Americans. After liberal columnist David Corn insisted that Mitt Romney had boxed himself in, politically, on the issue, Matthews snarled, "How is this any different than the big boat argument of people when it comes to African Americans after the Civil War?"

Matthews continued, "This idea of 'put them on a boat and send them back where they came from.'" Finding the worst motives in his political opponents, Matthews insisted, "You know, he says that in polite language, but that's what Romney's been saying. 'Get home where you came from.'" [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

President Obama on Friday bypassed Congress to put in place the New York Times' beloved Dream Act by executive order that halted deportation of young people who came to the United States illegally. That merited Saturday's lead story slot, occupied by immigration beat reporter Julia Preston and John Cushman, "Obama To Permit Young Migrants To Remain In U.S."

Preston and Cushman devoted precisely two of their 28 paragraphs to opposing views from "angry" Republicans in Congress. The rest were devoted to Obama's announcement, joyful illegals, and their liberal supporters happy that immigrants could finally, as the Times has reported ad nauseum, "come out of the shadows" (Preston's reporting in particular is notoriously pro-amnesty.) And the paper's succeeding stories on the issue were little better.

NBC's Nightly News on Friday offered a one-sided segment touting Barack Obama's decision to lift the threat of deportation to young people who came to America illegally. The Pete Williams report featured six clips of individuals or groups thrilled by the reaction, only two against and one nuanced response by Mitt Romney.

Williams began by touting, "Young people covered by the new policy cheered the announcement outside the White House." An unidentified woman enthused, "I can't describe it. It's so amazing. I'm so happy." A crowd in front of the White House chanted, "Yes, we did! Yes, we did! Yes, we did! Yes, we did!"

Days before President Obama proclaimed a new Justice Department edict concerning the deportation of young illegal immigrants, both the New York Times and Time magazine ran huge stories on Hispanics in America.

According to Fox News Watch panelists Saturday, this was no coincidence (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Friday's edition of CNN's Erin Burnett OutFront, the host was upfront in her enthusiasm for President Obama's immigration announcement, even including sound effects and grimacing when she spoke of "Republicans hissing like an angry cat cornered by the neighborhood dog." (video here):

ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: OUTFRONT next, the president makes an MVP-like political move that leaves Republicans flat footed. But is it the best policy for our country?

A Politico reporter has suggested that racism was behind Neil Munro's questioning of President Obama at the White House yesterday.  Saying "it's very, very difficult to place race outside of this context," the Politico's Joe Williams claimed racially-motivated direspect of PBO is part of a pattern among conservatives, citing Rep. Joe Wilson, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, and the Tea Party.

Williams made his remarks in the course of responding to a question from Michael Eric Dyson, subbing for Ed Schultz on MSNBC last night.  View the video after the jump.

NPR rushed out of the gate on Friday afternoon to defend President Obama's announcement to "lift the shadow of deportation" from young illegal immigrants. Correspondent Frank James spun the policy change as Obama getting to "the stage in his presidency, like so many of his predecessors, where his frustration with congressional inaction has led him to act unilaterally."

James cited several apparent historical precedents, including "President Harry S. Truman's racial integration of the military by executive order," and Thomas Jefferson making the Louisiana Purchase. He also labeled Republican Congressman Steve King an "immigration hard-liner" for his criticism of the President's move.