Jorge Ramos on Immigration, Brexit: It’s All Racism!

June 29th, 2016 9:00 AM

Univision/Fusion anchor Jorge Ramos has seen fit to grace us with his latest hot take. In the process, he finds a way to tie that into the politics surrounding the current presidential election, blaming a very familiar culprit.

Ramos recently uploaded an editorial video -which is most generously described as militant- in which he charges that anti-immigrant racism is at the heart of both the Supreme Court ruling which blocked implementation of DAPA, and of the Brexit vote across the pond. In terms of scope of showing us that race is the lens through which Ramos sees most (if not all) issues, the video below is perhaps the clearest and most extraordinary piece of evidence to date:


JORGE RAMOS, UNIVISION/FUSION ANCHOR: There are days when fear wins. That happened last Thursday when voters in Great Britain decided to leave the European Union and when the Supreme Court, in a split-vote on immigration, decided not to decide. Millions of British voters were afraid of the new waves of immigration coming from Syria, Libya, and Africa and decided to close the door.

That's exactly the same thing that Trump supporters have been saying here about Mexican immigrants and Muslims. But fear is a bad advisor. I don't exactly (know) what the British are going to do. But I do know what many Latinos are going to do here. Go to Congress? Of course not. Nothing happens in Congress lately. If the killing of 49 people in Orlando didn't move congress to approve new gun laws, just imagine what would happen with immigration reform.

So that leaves us with the election next November the 8th. For every undocumented immigrant here, there is at least one Latino voter. We are expecting about 13 million Hispanic voters, more than enough to decide a very close election. So the defeat at the Supreme court could be transformed into millions of new voters demanding real change. 

There's really nothing to celebrate when the law says that it is OK to separate thousands of parents from their children. In November, we will know who the real loser is. 

Ramos continues his fevered pointing at the specter of racism in his most recent Fusion column:

By sheer coincidence, the Supreme Court’s ruling was announced on the same day that the U.K. voted to leave the European Union—reminding all of us that, yes, there are days when fear wins. Xenophobia can flip any election—and that’s what Trump and his supporters are counting on in the U.S.

I hope that Americans can soon break this spell of hatred. I hope that the generosity afforded to me when I arrived in this country will extend to immigrants who arrived after me. If not, then I will look to people voting with their feet in the November general election. For every undocumented immigrant in the U.S. there is at least one Hispanic voter. And we Latinos tend to remember who has been there for us during our saddest days, and who has not.

This wanton flinging about of the race card is nothing new for such an accomplished grievance merchant as Ramos, who recently gloated over the respective presidential primary defeats of "race-traitors" Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. But it does reveal the extent to which Ramos is willing to inject pre-baked narratives about the reasons behind current events as opposed to considering differing viewpoints or even basic facts. Whether on Brexit or DAPAgeddon (or the sky being blue, perhaps), Ramos' answer is -first and always- racism and anti-immigrant xenophobia.

Never does it occur to Ramos that sovereign countries have the right to set immigration policy as they see fit. In fact, it appears that Europe's response to Brexit may be, precisely, to attempt to strip member states of their existing power to stand armies, collect taxes, and enforce their borders! The fact is that democratic societies have a right and a duty to resist encroachments on the rule of law, whether it is Texas seeking relief from a President hell-bent on bypassing Congress, or the British clawing back their sovereignty from a (mostly) unelected technocracy in Brussels. None of that seems to fit within the four corners of Ramos' narrow racialist worldview, but that doesn't make it any less true.

As far as the immigration executive orders are concerned, Ramos is as responsible as the rest for pushing that bill of goods on an unsuspecting viewership. It is demonstrably false to say that the Supreme Court "failed to decide" when everybody knew that a split vote (only made possible by the catastrophic passing of Justice Antonin Scalia) would effectively uphold the Fifth Circuit's ruling and block implementation of DAPA. The Court, in fact, decided. The issue is back at the feet of Congress, where it righfully belongs and where it will be voted on by duly elected members accountable to their constituents. 

Ramos again proceeds to wave the bloody shirt of racial grievance. Again, Ramos attempts to drive Hispanic electoral politics into a single-issue funnel. Again, Ramos blurs the line between hot take and hot garbáge. Again, Ramos shows utter contempt both for the rule of law and for those who may have a differing opinion. 

And yet again, notwithstanding his crowning by the corrupt and partisan Establishment Media, Jorge Ramos proves that in fact he does not speak for all Hispanics.

Tell the Truth 2016