Reply #123: It's Strategy #5 on "the Right-Wing Playbook on Immigration Reform".

[pampango]

http://www.pfaw.org/rww-in-focus/previewing-the-right-wing-playbook-immigration-reform#strategy5

"Strategy 5: Portray Immigrants as Carriers of Disease and Weapons of Bio-Terrorism

Portraying Mexican immigrants as unclean and unsafe has a long history in the United States; a recent Smithsonian exhibit on the Bracero migrant-worker program during World War II showed workers being doused in DDT at the border. Before Lou Dobbs left CNN on a wave of controversy over his anti-immigrant grandstanding, he suggested that immigrants from Mexico were responsible for an epidemic of leprosy in America, a claim he did not withdraw even after those claims had been thoroughly debunked.

ADL's 2008 report points to this gem from the Mothers Against Illegal Aliens website from November 2007:

The next time you eat in a restaurant or sleep in a hotel or motel....just remember to bring your own food, dishes, untensils , glasses, towels, and maybe your own water. The person who cooked your meal or made your bed may very well be the one who picked your fruit and vegetables, yesterday....and we've heard the stories about what they do in the fields....haven't we?

More recently, right-wing radio host Michael Savage was one of many to use the 2009 swine flu scare to drum up fear against immigrants, telling his listeners "illegal aliens are carriers…this is a disaster." Savage also suggested that the flu might be a terrorist concoction planted in Mexicans as a way of delivering it to the U.S. He wasn't the only one peddling that flu-as-weapon theory."

Response to Portraying Immigrants as Disease Carriers and Weapons of Biowarfare

Claims that immigrants are causing an epidemic of leprosy (thank you, Lou Dobbs) and other diseases is simply not true. And there is no evidence whatsoever to support the speculation by some right-wing pundits that the H1N1 flu was created by terrorists and implanted in immigrants from Mexico as a weapon of biological warfare. Spreading that kind of baseless and inflammatory speculation indicates that the speaker is not interested in serious policy debate, but is simply denigrating immigrants in order to make punitive policies more palatable to the American public, which is still inclined to support comprehensive reform. As journalist Edward Schumacher-Matos wrote in a May 2009 op ed:

Demonization of Mexican and other Latino immigrants is fueling hate crimes and violence against them, and it's time for America's leaders and media to put a stop to it all. The swine-flu scapegoating of Mexicans over the past two weeks by some radio and television talk show hosts reflects the abandon with which many local officials, anti-immigrant groups and even an unthinking mainstream media create popular resentments, dehumanize immigrants and provide justification for the extremists among us to act violently.at the flu might be a terrorist concoction planted in Mexicans as a way of delivering it to the U.S. He wasn't the only one peddling that flu-as-weapon theory."