"Is Racism Fueling the Immigration Debate"

The article is about immigration and statistics that have been found about the issue. Mr. John Gibson of Fox News stated some information that was not necessarily true. Mr. Gibson states how minorities are having more babies and soon they will make up a greater population than American citizens. He was wrong in stating this information according to the Census Bureau. The census bureau states that “in 2030 the Hispanic population of the U.S. will be about 20.1 %. Fifty years from now, the majority of Americans will still be white and 24.4 % will be Hispanic (Census Bureau)”. It is stated that the political parties need to give this topic more attention. The article then goes on to speak about how they are sending more National Guard troops down to the border of Mexico to help secure the fence. Yet some are wondering why this action is not being taken at the border of Canada, where Ahmed Ressam tried to enter with a car full of explosives to take out the Los Angeles airport. The article also states that "19 of the 9-11 terrorists entered our Country legally(Calabresi)". This to me seems senseless to build such a wall when terrorists can just walk into the Country legally. They should be least worried about illegal immigrants entering the Country and more worried about people entering to harm us. Massimo Calabresi says that lawmakers should be focusing more on how many immigrants should be allowed into the U.S. each year. A professor at Harvard, Mr. Samuel P. Huntington stated that this has been seen through history with every group of immigrants. This issue to me seems that it will just pass over with the rest of the immigration issues because having these immigrants here is not affecting the economy so much as the waste of money to build a fence to keep them out. All that the fence does is make getting into the U.S. a little harder yet still manageable for these immigrants. Overall, I believe that people make untrue statements about the issue in fear of being over-run by another race of people. Also, we are putting too much money into something that barely keeps illegal immigrants out of the Country. To me they are causing no harm and carrying out jobs that some Americans do not want to do for such a low cost. I believe that this issue should be evaluated in more depth in this years’ election in hopes of finding a better solution to the problem.

Wednesday, May 17 2006 TIME
Article By: Massimo Calabresi

Is Racism Fueling the Immigration Debate?

On May 10, 2006 there was an article posted by the Washington Post which stated that “45% of the nation’s children under the age of five are racial or ethnic minorities…” (Washington Post). They also stated that the percentile of minorities having children in America is increasing largely. The vast majority is Hispanic immigrants. The very next day on May 11 a reporter from Fox News developed a story about this article. John Gibson the reporter had the audacity to tell American citizens to start having more babies, his exacted words were “Do your duty. Make more babies… half of the kids in this country under five years old are minorities.” He is a racist bigot. His statement was taken completely out of context. He rounded up the percentile of Hispanic population from 45% to half the population of America. He makes a hasty generalization, he states that twenty-five years from now the Hispanic population will be over half, which is incorrect. The Census bureau published an outlook for the population in 2030; it stated that the Hispanic population will be around 20%. I believe his reasoning for broadcasting this report was derived from racism.
There has been talk about sealing the American border from invasion by Hispanics. But no one has mentioned sealing the Canadian border. The Millennium Bomber crossed the Canadian border into America and was planning to bomb the LA Airport. But he was intercepted and thrown into prison for terrorist activity.
A way to solve terrorist and illegal immigration would be to close off all borders and make immigrants go through an intensive process to even come into America. But this would hurt our economy and our growing culture. America would not be what it is today if we didn’t have the cultural differences from all of the immigrants who have ventured into this great country, The United States of America.

Time Magazine
17 May 2006
Massimo Calabresi
Page A10

Is Racism Fueling the Immigration Debate?

“A lot of the anti-immigration movement is jingoistic at best and racist at worst. There is a fear of white people being over run by darker-skinned people,” a quote from the Time’s article Is Racism Fueling the Immigration Debate? In simpler terms, the majority of Americans who share anti-immigrant views are based on extreme patriotism at best and racisms at worst. The strong patriotic feelings of some Americans fuel their fear and resentment towards immigrants because of the possibility that they may one day be over run by minorities. I find many of these views contradicting when there is a strong possibility that an African American might be the next president of the United States. Where have these fears gone now? Have they suddenly disappeared? The country might actually be governed by an African American. Now personally I have no problems with the possibility of Barack Obama becoming president because I believe he has a plan to make change for this nation. Yes, I might be going a bit off topic, but I believe it is a great example which demonstrates how many of these individuals can suddenly change their mind and become in favour of a minority running their country. With the appointment of Obama, I strongly believe that Obama can finally put behind many negative views faced by minorities as well as immigrants. For the youth of the future, they will grow with new values and disciplines because of the growing influences and acceptance of minorities. According to the article, 45% of the nation’s children under the age of five are racial or ethnic minorities. 45%! That’s a staggering statistic which blew me away. I never really thought that there was that many young children who are minorities, but yet again, I believe this strongly supports what I’m saying. The new generation of tomorrow will be the most accepting generation ever seen. Schools will be increasing with more and more minorities and white children will be soon interacting with more and more minorities. The racist views will slowly but surely begin to evaporate in this country. Finally, I have to disagree with the last statement made by the author. I don’t believe that the anti-immigration problem should be blamed on politicians but rather on the public. Politicians never place any negative views towards immigrants but have been positive about them. Until the day individuals start to develop new values and begin to look past the colour of someone’s skin, these anti-movements will continue to exist.


Article written by: Massimo Calabresi
The New York Times
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Article on page A10

Is Racism Fueling the Immigration Debate

I would personally like to refute the claims that are made in the May 17, 2006, Time Magazine article entitled “Is Racism Fueling the Immigration Debate.” I personally do not see how a country wanting to limit the flow of immigrants (mostly illegals) can be considered racism. Limiting immigration is not saying that we are intolerant or unaccepting of the possible immigrants. I think that it just shows that the country has its citizens in mind when doing this. Letting an influx of immigrants who will work for little pay in would limir the amount of unskilled jobs for high school dropouts. Also, America is a land of immigrants, when we were founded and the colonies began we were all immigrants. Over the years the melting pot that is America has developed traditions and a culture that is unlike any other and in my opinion, a pretty good one. That is not to say that the new traditions that the new immigrants might bring would not be good, but changing the identity of a nation could be catastrophic. It could lead to regional violence much like that in Iraq, or even another possible civil war. So I believe that a firm immigration policy is not racist at all, but instead a country looking out for the best interest of it citizens.

Janette Turner Hospital: Author Presentation

Janette Turner Hospital, born in Melbourne, Australia visited Wabash College this week to share some readings and author interpretations of her novel. Two of Janette Turner Hospital’s novels, The Ivory Swing, and Charades won Canada’s seal award and was shortlisted for the Miles Frankling and National Book Council Award respectively. She began the presentation by depicting the background to her life for the audience. She described her mode of movement throughout Australia, Canada, and the US. Janette Turner Hospital explained to the audience how she went about creating all her coveted novels and short stories. She explained how she did the vast majority of her work during the summers since she taught throughout the school year and it left her with little time. When asked if she writes notes or jots down ideas during the school year, she replied that she did not because she allowed it to drift to the back of her mind. She then read to the audience some of her interesting short stories she handpicked prior to the presentation that she believed illustrated a good representation of her work. She talked for a quick stint about how a lot of her works had a theme of tragedy and those real life tragedies such as 9/11 and the London bus bombings occurred within a year’s time of publishing.
In my opinion, Janette Turner Hospitals presentation about her novels and short stories she has created was not only intriguing, but also insightful. It was intriguing to me because it was interesting to hear from the authors point of view, how she tackled sorting her ideas and when she did most of her work. She effectively described a coherent explanation to every question thrown her way. At one point in the presentation she was asked about how she used imagery to paint a vivid picture in the readers mind. In her response to the question she described how she used imagery as a key element in her writing because she believed it helped illustrate ideas more effectively. This was insightful because she described to us the different ways she came up with ideas. She described to the audience one example of an instance in which her personal experience led to her epiphany in beginning a novel. Janette Turner Hospitals presentation at Wabash College was one of the best I have ever been attendance for. She explained to the audience about all her epiphanies of novels and short stories, while providing intriguing motifs that they all shared. I loved how she was able to coherently incorporate the audiences questions and opinions into her presentations focal points. Janette Turner Hospital is a brilliant writer, and I hope that she continues to create masterful pieces of work for all to devour and interpret in their minds.

"A New Line in the Sand"

700 Miles of fencing.  $1 million per mile.  Is it worth it?  In the article David Von Drehle explains America's plan to solve the illegal immigration.  The United States decided to up the security on the border by funding a new and improved fence.  The fence that had been standing before was meek and penetrable by many standards. Von Drehle explains, "DHS aims to complete more than 650 miles (roughly 1000km) of barrier by the end of the year, built in sections by National Guard units and private contractors.  That represents only about one-third of the U.S.-Mexico border; on the other hand, the fence clearly delineates, for the first time, a frontier that was previously just a four-strand cattle fence at best."  From this statement I have to say that something needed to be done.  A "four-strand cattle fence at best" lets me know that before our country didn't really do all they could about security, but they could blame problems on illegal immigration.  I just don't think that it was right, however the U.S. is obviously taking strides in the right direction now.  They have decided to put about a billion dollars into this project, but I come back to ask the question again, is i worth it?  In my opinion it is worth the money because it needed to be done, but we cannot expect it to solve all of the illegal immigration problems.  It is inevitable that it will happen because the real problem, as Von Drehle describes, is in the country of Mexico itself.  These immigrants are trying to escape to a place with some economic opportunities to succeed, and in Mexico this is nearly impossible.  Once Mexico turns its economy in the right direction the U.S. will no longer have this illegal immigration problem from the Southwest. 

David Von Drehle

Time Magazine

June 30, 2008 

“Is Racism Fueling the Immigration Debate?”

Did you know that 45% of the nation’s children under the age five are racial or ethnic minorities? That is almost half of our children in this country are minorities. The Time article quotes John Gibson from Fox News. He states that “it’s our duty to make more babies…” I believe this statement is racist but I don’t believe that racism is fueling the debate. A Senate Democratic leadership aide said “There is a fear of white people being overrun by darker-skinned people.” We really can’t fight this and say that there isn’t a fear because there is, but we can’t say it’s our duty to make more babies and to make sure this doesn’t happen. There are people out there who are racist and don’t like the fact that millions of people in the United States are immigrants. The ultimate question arises, should ethnicity be a factor in granting citizenship? I think ethnicity should be the last factor in “estimating” if a person if worthy enough to be a citizen of the United States. The person’s character should be the underlining factor in deciding on their asylum. The person should be judge by what kind of person they are. By judging on character, we will have to have more tests and interview to limit the number of potential terrorist. Overall, we need to do something about our immigration system. It takes years on top of more years for a person to receive any information about if their paper work good enough. We can’t change the fact that people in our country have different opinions and views, but we can’t account for the entire country. We need a fair immigration system to where the person is judged by who they are and not by where his or she is from.

Time Article
Issue: May 17th, 2006
By: Massimo Calabresi/Washington