Wed, Jul 09, 2008

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zbird


cooking the numbers, just like a conservative

 Do all conservatives get their propaganda training from Fox News?  The US doesn't track immigrants by religion, but it shows that 53% of immigrants come from Latin America (and are presumably mostly Christian).  That means that all other immigrant groups, including Chinese, South Asian, Southeast Asian, African, and, yes, Arab--all of those groups together comprise only 47% of immigrants.

Yet wherever Derbyshire mentions the composition of immigrants, he refers to them as Muslims and Latinos--always mentioning Muslims first, as if they were a plurality of immigrants (apparently other ethnic groups don't exist to Derbyshire).  

I think reasonable people can disagree about whether and how much immigration is appropriate, but quit fooling around with the numbers, for Christ sake.  

 Also, Derbyshire may be right that anti-semitism in Latin America is more common and more frank than in the US, particularly if you're talking about New York and other parts of the US with large Jewish populations.  But he's way overstating his case--I've been all over Latin America and never ran into any overt anti-semitism (I've had much worse experiences in Europe). 

Most Latin Americans have little to no contact with Jews, and if a few of them harbor prejudice against us, it's usually not deeply-held or emotionally driven, and easily reversed by simply meeting a few Jewish people.  And to the extent that anti-semitism is more "frank" than in the US, it's because Latin America does not suffer from as much political correctness as the US--people speak more frankly in general over there.

--Z





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