Reply #8: Agreed. That's what conservatives do; they use subsets of immigrants to create divisions.

[pampango]

Sarkozy in France is using the burka ban to appeal to the far right, even though it's estimated that less than one-tenth of one percent (a tiny subset) of Muslims wear the burka in France. Bush I used Willie Horton (a "scary" Black ex-convict and a tiny subset of Blacks) to scare white voters. The tea party uses instances of illegal immigrants committing crimes to taint that whole group even though their rate of crimes is much lower than that of "real" Americans.

It's not so much that the conservatives are "right" or "wrong" about their stereotyping of certain subsets immigrants. It's that they use these talking points to divide the rest of us and for their own electoral advantage.

In France Sarkozy would like for the French to focus on the tiny minority of Muslim immigrants that wear a burka to distract them from the real problems his administration has caused or not dealt with. In the UK, while Cameron acknowledges that the country has "benefited hugely" from immigration, he is compelled to throw a bone to the right (and cast a stone at the left - "Labour presided over the "largest influx" of immigration in British history") by pointing to some subset of immigrants on whom the folks who "want their country back" can focus. I didn't see Cameron cite any statistics on how many immigrants can't speak English. He says "on occasion" there are some who don't want to learn the language or integrate. "On occasion" doesn't sound like a large number, but are we talking about a "Sarkozy-like" one-tenth of 1% or 10% or 25%?