Code Words of Hate
When people acting as “experts” or “commentators” on the immigration debate demonize Latino immigrants, either legal or illegal, as a dangerous threat to American society or as subhuman and inherently inferior, they follow a tragic historical pattern which, time and again, has led to extreme civil rights abuses in American history.
Such labels are used to justify extreme action, sometimes even genocide, since the people using those labels claim that the “larger public interest” is at risk. Further, if a group is widely accepted as “inhuman” or “inferior,” it allows the rest of society to suspend its normal standards of right and wrong in judging actions taken against the target group.
A remarkable number of commentators on immigration make explicitly race-based appeals, often accompanied by ethnic slurs or stereotypes.* One of the bolder articulators of these views was the late Samuel Francis, a writer for the anti-immigrant journal, The Social Contract, who was fired by the Washington Times in part for suggesting... Read more
War and Invasion
It is increasingly common for mainstream commentators to refer to the current immigration phenomenon as a "war" in which the U.S. is being "invaded." For example, frequent television commentator Pat Buchanan said on Fox News recently... Read more
Conquest
A variant of this militaristic theme are references to "La Reconquista," an antiquated metaphor used by Chicano scholars in the 1960s to refer to a mythical "Aztlán," in the Southwest. Although it is difficult to find anyone in the Latino community outside of a few student groups or fringe groups that have ever espoused this idea, it appears to be gaining far more attention and notoriety in the context of the current immigration debate than it ever did as a scholarly doctrine.* Read more
Disease
As ADL notes, references to Latino immigrants riddled with dangerous diseases are frequent. For example, on November 23, 2007, Michelle Dallacroce posted a video on the "Mothers Against Illegal Aliens" website, noting... Read more
Criminality
Many commentators inaccurately suggest that immigrants in general, and Latino immigrants in particular, have a higher proclivity to commit crime.* CNN's Glenn Beck suggests that Mexicans come from an inherently lawless culture... Read more
Economics and Welfare
There are numerous references in the debate to allegations that immigrants "steal jobs" from Americans and create other adverse economic* NCLR's review found numerous references to immigrants as criminals, including terms such as "flotsam and jetsam that seeks to float into our territory," "lawlessness and chaos"... Read more
See code words of hate used against Latinos in the immigration debate
See which spokespeople and hate and extremist groups are using them
See which networks are complicit in providing airtime to hate groups and vigilantes
Learn about hate crimes against Latinos