Bustillo LAT Article Extols Sedition, Drug Running
The L.A. Times has seldom run as misconceived and destructive an article as yesterday's Page 1 piece by Houston bureau chief Miguel Bustillo on a small Latino village on the Texas side of the Rio Grande where the people, according to Bustillo, still oppose the results of the Mexican War and "seem more leery of newcomers such as the Border Patrol and the Minutemen than they are of illegal immigrants and drug runners."
I say at the outset this article is misconceived and destructive because it is highly doubtful that millions of Latino citizens of the United States agree with these villagers, who are outraged that the U.S. is planning to build a fence to keep out the illegals in their area.
All that Bustillo's article can effectively do is to build anti-immigrant and anti-Latino sentiment in the U.S. It is going to exacerbate every prejudice that exists.
I wonder what Bustillo's real sentiments are, and I wonder about the editors of the L.A. Times who decided to run such a wrongfully-provocative article. Bustillo, however, has done some good work in the past.
More and more in recent years, the L.A. Times does not exhibit good sense, either on its editorial pages, or in its choice of what can be run that will annoy and lose readers.
Of course, defenders of the Bustillo article will say that every point of view must be reflected in the pages of the newspapers. But I don't believe the New York Times or Washington Post would have run such an article. Its editors know better than that. The New York Times certainly is altogether more circumspect.
The village of Granjeno has but 400 residents, and appears to be on a main route by which thousands of illegals are crossing into the United States. There are 12 million of these already, and Congress cannot agree on what to do about them. Meanwhile, the issue of illegal immigration has become a major subject of debate in Iowa and other early-voting states.
Bustillo seems to have a gift for unnecessarily stirring up his readers.
What other goal could he have had when he quotes a man, Rey Anzaldua, 62, as saying, "We didn't come to the United States. The United States came to us?"
Horse shit! The Mexican War occurred 97 years before Anzaldua was born, and the fact is that after there was a rebellion in Texas, and the Mexican Army wiped out the Texas contingent at the Alamo, the U.S. decided to expand its boundaries, taking Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.
The conquest was recognized in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican war, and the millions of Latinos who have come to the U.S. since then, came, not to undo the treaty, but in recognition of the fact that, for them, the U.S. is a far better place to live and earn a living than Mexico. (Some of these immigrants come from Central and South America and simply pass through Mexico).
As to the statement in this article that people in the village seem more leery of the Border Patrol than they do of drug runners, this does not say much of the people there. If they really believe this, their village should be razed, the people imprisoned as accomplices of the drug peddlers, or deported back to Mexico, where, presumably, they would be happier and could even obtain their drugs more easily.
And how about the suggestion that "some bureaucrat in Washington" is behind the idea to build a border fence. The fact is, the bureaucracy has resisted the idea, which comes from pressure in the public and Congress.
Meanwhile, the editors of the L.A. Times should beware of being dragged along by radicals and miscreants in disgraceful directions. They ought to edit, not just pass through junk.
I say at the outset this article is misconceived and destructive because it is highly doubtful that millions of Latino citizens of the United States agree with these villagers, who are outraged that the U.S. is planning to build a fence to keep out the illegals in their area.
All that Bustillo's article can effectively do is to build anti-immigrant and anti-Latino sentiment in the U.S. It is going to exacerbate every prejudice that exists.
I wonder what Bustillo's real sentiments are, and I wonder about the editors of the L.A. Times who decided to run such a wrongfully-provocative article. Bustillo, however, has done some good work in the past.
More and more in recent years, the L.A. Times does not exhibit good sense, either on its editorial pages, or in its choice of what can be run that will annoy and lose readers.
Of course, defenders of the Bustillo article will say that every point of view must be reflected in the pages of the newspapers. But I don't believe the New York Times or Washington Post would have run such an article. Its editors know better than that. The New York Times certainly is altogether more circumspect.
The village of Granjeno has but 400 residents, and appears to be on a main route by which thousands of illegals are crossing into the United States. There are 12 million of these already, and Congress cannot agree on what to do about them. Meanwhile, the issue of illegal immigration has become a major subject of debate in Iowa and other early-voting states.
Bustillo seems to have a gift for unnecessarily stirring up his readers.
What other goal could he have had when he quotes a man, Rey Anzaldua, 62, as saying, "We didn't come to the United States. The United States came to us?"
Horse shit! The Mexican War occurred 97 years before Anzaldua was born, and the fact is that after there was a rebellion in Texas, and the Mexican Army wiped out the Texas contingent at the Alamo, the U.S. decided to expand its boundaries, taking Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.
The conquest was recognized in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican war, and the millions of Latinos who have come to the U.S. since then, came, not to undo the treaty, but in recognition of the fact that, for them, the U.S. is a far better place to live and earn a living than Mexico. (Some of these immigrants come from Central and South America and simply pass through Mexico).
As to the statement in this article that people in the village seem more leery of the Border Patrol than they do of drug runners, this does not say much of the people there. If they really believe this, their village should be razed, the people imprisoned as accomplices of the drug peddlers, or deported back to Mexico, where, presumably, they would be happier and could even obtain their drugs more easily.
And how about the suggestion that "some bureaucrat in Washington" is behind the idea to build a border fence. The fact is, the bureaucracy has resisted the idea, which comes from pressure in the public and Congress.
Meanwhile, the editors of the L.A. Times should beware of being dragged along by radicals and miscreants in disgraceful directions. They ought to edit, not just pass through junk.
Labels: Immigration
posted by Ken Reich at 5:48 AM
1 comments
