The Democrats blinked in the first round of the government-shutdown fight over immigration, but they promise to regroup and fight again for illegal immigrants who came to America as minors. The Democrats call them “Dreamers,” and so the “Facts First” media employ that loaded propaganda term as well.
One might argue it’s only a technical term, an acronym for the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, designed to grant conditional residency to those who immigrated illegally as children. It was first introduced by Dick Durbin and Orrin Hatch in 2001.
It is perfectly reasonable for politicians to plop an appealing title on legislation. The “Clean Air Act.” The “Highway Beautification Act.” Or Trump’s “Tax Cut & Jobs Act.” But while both parties do it, there is a key difference. Republicans know theirs will be derided by the press. Democrats know the same media will be their megaphones.
So, for example, CBS reporter Nancy Cordes reported that the Democrats say “this hardball strategy is the only way to force GOP leaders to the table before hundreds of thousands of immigrant Dreamers face deportation.”
Sometimes they qualify it, like “so-called Dreamers” or “what they call Dreamers,” which adds at least a fraction of emotional distance. In print, they might add quotation marks.
But overall, they don’t. It’s an emotional investment. Liberal media outlets already portray all ages of illegal immigrants as a virtuous and deserving category, as better humans than people with well, “citizenship privilege.” In fact, when was the last time you heard any journalist use the term “illegal alien”? Or “illegal” anything? But the “Dreamers” are even more wonderful.
Here’s a typical New York Times lede from last August: “Jessica Rojas beat poverty to put herself through engineering college, where she collected accolades for academic achievement. After graduating last year, Ms. Rojas, who grew up in Chicago, was hired by a utility company to help modernize the city’s electrical grid.”
You won’t read in The New York Times: “Jessica Rojas broke federal law by sneaking into this country illegally.”
The media claim to love facts, and suggest their critics can’t handle facts, and traffic in phony “alternate facts.” But they have a way of being very careful in organizing the facts to match their policy preferences. So if the children of illegal aliens join the vicious Salvadoran gang MS-13, they aren’t starring in a New York Times story on “Dreamers.” Only the valedictorians and electical engineers represent this group.
Liberals claim to love humanity, with hearts that must be two sizes larger than the average American. But not every category of vulnerable humans gets this treatment. Consider the hundreds of thousands of unborn babies who are aborted each year in this country. They are not considered part of humanity. Reporters use the cold, clinical term “fetus.” These humans never get a chance to get an engineering degree to gain your sympathy. No journalist calls them “Dreamers.”
Instead, a year ago, the New York Times rolled out the “Christian” abortionist Willie Parker and allowed him to play philosopher. “Life is a process, not an event,” he argued, and “A fetus is not a person; it’s a human entity.” He added, “If I thought I was killing a person, I wouldn’t do abortions.”
But the Times interviewer, Ana Marie Cox, worried out loud about “abortion access” being damaged by “the sacralization of motherhood” and ended by telling Parker “you seem pretty cool!” In the liberal mind, deportation is a tragedy, and abortion is....pretty cool.
