As argued here before, on no issue is the New York Times' bias more obvious than on illegal immigration, and it shows in both the tone and terminology used regarding President Trump’s latest offer in the fight over Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.
The front of Friday’s Times showcased Michael Shear and Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s “Immigration Offer: Citizenship and Stern Tactics.” (Love that “stern.”) A large photo online featured liberal Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois meeting with what the caption awkwardly termed “young unauthorized immigrants known as Dreamers....”
President Trump proposed legislation on Thursday that would provide a path to citizenship for as many as 1.8 million young undocumented immigrants in exchange for an end to decades of family-based migration policies, a costly border wall and a vast crackdown on other immigrants living in the country illegally.
Not even Trump’s generous (some would say over-generous) proposals pleased Times reporters.
But the new plan -- drafted by Stephen Miller, the president’s hard-line domestic policy adviser, and John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff -- was immediately rejected by Democrats, immigration advocates and some Republicans, with some describing it as nothing but an attempt to rid the country of immigrants and shut the nation’s borders.
That’s way overstated.
Then the Times tried to coax Trump toward amnesty for illegals, long the paper’s default position.
Members of both parties said that legislation would have a better chance of passing if it focused on legal status for DACA recipients without a dramatic crackdown on illegal immigrants or new restrictions on legal immigration for extended family members.
The reporters used loaded terms to describe those in favor of the rule of law.
The president’s legislative proposal is designed to exert maximum pressure on Democrats, who are desperate to protect the young immigrants, known as Dreamers, but who fiercely oppose the policies embraced by hard-liners like Mr. Miller.
The strategy would work only if the Senate fails to reach a broad bipartisan accord on an alternative: legislation that would protect the Dreamers and bolster border security, but reject the most draconian aspects of the White House’s proposal.
....
And even as Mr. Trump was offering reassuring words to the Dreamers -- “tell them not to worry,” he told reporters Wednesday evening -- senior White House officials were emphasizing the more hard-line features of their forthcoming immigration proposal.
There were five “hard-lines” in the story, which is about four too many for the sake of objectivity.
Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and Mr. Graham have been leading bipartisan talks on immigration. Their initial proposal -- which did not include the president’s more hard-line proposals -- was rejected by Mr. Trump during a White House meeting in which the president used vulgarities to describe Africans.
Actually, he described countries, not people, in vulgar terms, though the Times is eager to conflate the two to make Trump look all the more racist.
