Swine Flu Rhetoric Part of Broader Anti-Immigration Strategy

[babylonsister]

Swine Flu Rhetoric Part of Broader Anti-Immigration Strategy
Restrictionists Point to Crisis of Moment to Buck Comprehensive Immigration Reform
By Daphne Eviatar 5/1/09 6:00 AM


If the anti-immigrant reactions to the outbreak of swine flu are any indication, advocates for immigration reform are going to have an uphill battle in Congress this year.

On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Citizenship held its first hearing on Comprehensive Immigration Reform. The hearing was full of powerful arguments for why comprehensive immigration reform would boost the U.S. economy, enhance public safety and reinforce American values of hard work, family unity and entrepreneurship. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan testified to how legalizing undocumented immigrants would boost economic conditions for everyone, while Thomas Manger, Montgomery County, Md., Police Chief and Chairman of the legislative committee for the Major Cities Chiefs’ Association, testified that legalization would improve relationships between local communities and police officers and help law enforcement do its job.

But one witness, Joel Hunter, a church pastor who spoke eloquently of the humanitarian need for immigration reform, alluded to the dark side of the debate that could ultimately torpedo the reform effort: “A broken {immigration} system tempts many to predatory practices,” he said, including “the talk show hosts that increase their fame and fortune by picturing those without the proper papers only as conniving and dangerous parasites…”

The swine flu crisis this week played perfectly into the hands of those Hunter described.

When it comes to immigration, the facts often don’t seem to matter. Whether it’s a struggling economy or the threat of a pandemic, the crisis of the day becomes fodder for restrictionist activists to claim that immigration reform – particularly if it involves legalization, or what they derisively call “amnesty” – will only exacerbate the United States’ problems.

As Media Matters documented, nationally syndicated radio host Michael Savage led the pack last Friday, saying: “Make no mistake about it: Illegal aliens are the carriers of the new strain of human-swine avian flu from Mexico.”

more...

http://washingtonindependent.com/41423/swine-flu-rhetoric-part-of-broader-anti-immigration-strategy

[lapfog_1]

1. Turns out that this particular strain of flu might have

immigrated TO Mexico from the US (in the pigs that were shipped to a pig "farm" there)... then it jumped to humans.

[babylonsister]

2. That's no excuse for what the r/w pigs have been saying.

And no one is sure where this originated.

[lapfog_1]

3. I think you misread my reply

if anyone has a complaint, it's MEXICO, not us.

The idiot racist freeper types are claiming that it spread from Mexico to the US by illegal immigrants.

Nothing could be further from the truth. For example the cluster of cases in NYC are known to be there because of a trip taken to Mexico by some school kids. They returned to NYC and went to school... thus infecting other children. This was all happening even before the "pandemic alerts"... so no amount of border walls or clampdown on the border was going to stop it from entering the US.

As for the origin of the flu... actually they DO have a pretty good idea.

Read this article here

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/01/swine-flu-may-have-evolve_n_194404.html

As for the current outbreak, the pig farm in Mexico near VeraCruz is the likely epicenter. A pig farm operated by a US corporation.

[babylonsister]

4. I did, sorry. I've read so much and have had to defend

MX, I'm getting dizzy. And I did read where it could have started in CA or at the border. I've also read that some cases have developed in other countries that had no contact with Mexico, which is interesting. We may never know.

[lapfog_1]

5. Apparently, according to the Huffpo story

this particular strain has been around for nearly a decade. It simply hasn't been "news"... and it may have mutated to perform the trickiest part of the bid to infect as many hosts as possible... not only jump species but then to continue to infect more humans and go "airborne".

It's wrong to think of flu viruses as thinking creatures, hell, a flu virus is hardly anything that we would recognize as alive.

However, it replicates and mutates, and those to features are enough for any virus (or other creature) to adapt and succeed in the environment it finds itself. (Theory of adaptation in artificial and natural systems being my post graduate studies at college).

A virus like this one may, indeed, have been around for a long time and only recently mutated to a "pandemic virus" (however, oddly enough, it seems to have mutated again, very rapidly, to not be as lethal to human hosts as with the first outbreak of human carriers in Mexico).