5.04.2007

pat buchanan blames immigration... for everything

This has go to be the most racist, anti-immigrant piece of writing to come out of the shooting massacre at Virginia Tech, an opinion by (surprise surprise) Pat Buchanan: The Dark Side of Diversity. While most news outlets seem to have moved beyond emphasizing Seung Hui Cho's immigration history and resident alien status, Buchanan here goes to great to lengths to connect the dots from immigrant to killer:
Almost no attention has been paid to the fact that Cho Seung-Hui was not an American at all, but an immigrant, an alien. Had this deranged young man who secretly hated us never come here, 32 people would heading home from Blacksburg for summer vacation.

What was Cho doing here? How did he get in?

Cho was among the 864,000 Koreans here as a result of the Immigration Act of 1965, which threw the nation's doors open to the greatest invasion in history, an invasion opposed by a majority of our people. Thirty-six million, almost all from countries whose peoples have never fully assimilated in any Western country, now live in our midst.

Cho was one of them.
Never mind the fact that Cho lived in America for more than half his life. He goes on to list a number of immigrants who have killed people in the United States, invoking September 1th, serial rapists and mass murderers—who apparently became this way because they refused to assimilate to America's "history, heritage, faith, language, tradition, culture, music, myth or morality." But Buchanan somehow neglects to mention the scores of killers, rapists, pedophiles, and other violent offenders who were born and bred right here in the good ol' US of A. And it's worth noting none of immigrants gone "berserk" he chooses to list off are of European descent. This is the worst kind of fear-mongering—exploiting tragedy to advance his own anti-immigrant, xenophobic agenda. That's racist! Scary to think this guy actually wants to be President. He argues that America would be "a better, safer, freer, happier, more united and caring country" without mass immigration. I wish someone, years ago, had applied this advice before letting Buchanan's own immigrant ancestors into the country. We would all be better off.

UPDATE: Here's a great, reasoned commentary on the other side of the immigration debate, by Ruben Navarrette Jr: Fear of foreigners drives immigration debate. Let's be honest. It's true.

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