By now it should come as no surprise that the nation’s most prominent Hispanic journalist is also its most activist. Univision’s Jorge Ramos recently penned a New York Times column where he prescribes a radical means to his long-time radical end: ending the filibuster to pass President Joe Biden’s immigration reform bill.
Of course, this isn’t the first time that Ramos comes out in favor of specific policies or ideologies. In addition to having issues with Hispanics who feel “totally identified with THIS country and trying to make the non-binary non-word “Latinx” a thing, Ramos has, to wit:
- Called for repeal of the Second Amendment.
- Supported the Green New Deal.
- Advocated for legalized euthanasia.
- And, of course, simped for “Democratic Socialism.”
But of course, immigration is the apex issue when it comes to policy advocacy and preferences, and Ramos appears to have grown tired of waiting on Democrats. Ramos wrote (click "expand"):
Asked recently why no real progress had been made in bipartisan talks on immigration, Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, replied simply: “The southern border.” And that is not changing any time soon. Republicans are very likely to reframe the debate over the border — and the thousands of refugees and unaccompanied children crossing it — in their bid to retake control of the U.S. Congress in the 2022 midterm elections. This means that President Biden and the Democrats are left with but one option on immigration reform: Do it now, without bipartisan support. Or it will never happen.
I’m certain that Mr. Biden wants to solve this problem, and I’m sure that if Congress were to send him an immigration bill legalizing the presence of more than 10 million undocumented Americans, he would sign it immediately. But time isn’t on his side. And waiting can be risky.
(....)
One of Mr. Biden’s first acts upon taking office was sending a comprehensive immigration proposal, to be called the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, to Congress. And according to a Quinnipiac University poll published in February, most Americans support a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented. But this proposal and other similar bills remain stuck on Capitol Hill.
Democrats still lack the votes to overturn the current Senate rules, which effectively require proponents of a bill to muster a 60-vote supermajority to advance it. The only way out is to end the minority party’s power to stall legislation — the filibuster — and pass very concrete laws for the benefit of Dreamers and migrant farmworkers through a procedural budget shortcut called reconciliation. Both options are politically aggressive and would face huge Republican opposition. But it’s about time we made radical decisions to protect the lives of millions of immigrants like María and Karen.
President Biden, the clock is ticking. Please don’t wait much longer. We can’t afford to repeat the mistakes of the past.
As you see, policy is not Ramos’ strong suit inasmuch as if you repeal the filibuster you don’t need to worry about passing things through reconciliation.
The immigration through reconciliation gambit may seem familiar, because we first exposed it a little over five months ago when Ramos allowed immigration advocates to float that idea unchallenged. With immigration reform floundering in the Senate, Ramos now sees fit to do his own heavy lifting.
Readers of this byline also know WHY immigration is such an important issue to the nation’s Spanish-language media. Weigh what Ramos told a group of Harvard students against the images of migrants streaming across the Rio Grande, and you’ll get a better sense for why immigration is a Holy Grail issue.
I think the future of Spanish-language media is assured for decades, simply, for a very simple reason: Despite of the fact that the majority of the growth within the Hispanic community is coming from people being born here, we still have one to two million immigrants, legally and illegally coming in every single year. Most of them speak Spanish. So, therefore, we have a market that is growing and growing.
And I think we can assure you that in the next few decades, you'll see Spanish-language media. That's another topic completely, but the Latino community is keeping so many elements from their country of origin, including Spanish- 9 out of 10 Latinos speak Spanish...speak Spanish at home- that- and we're doing things that Italians didn't do, or Russians, or Eastern Europeans didn't do- and the closeness to our countries of origin and the communications that we have are keeping Spanish-language media alive. And thanks to that, it's a new power that other immigrant communities didn't have in the past.
Jorge Ramos remains the only national network anchor with his own syndicated opinion column, Even by modern media standards, this is not normal. And Hispanic news audiences deserve an alternative.
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