Received this hate-mail:
On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 10:16 AM, [redacted] wrote:
This is really scary!
My Response:
Hello [redacted], and everyone else,
This would be scary if it were true, but as far as I can tell, this e-mail is a giant lie.
I searched the Los Angeles times to fact-check these statistics:
0 results for search term(s): “living in garages”
0 results for search term(s): “2/3 of all births”
searching for 60% HUD returns 5 articles, none of which have that statistic
The author was able to embed images of Nancy Pelosi, couldn’t he provide a hyperlink to the statistics?
I searched google for “29% of inmates in federal prisons are illegal aliens”
and found this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/comments/display?contentID=AR2007010801473#164839
which is just a re-posting of these apparently made-up statistics falsely attributed to the LA times.
How can a non-citizen receive welfare? They can’t. This lie is debunked here: http://blogs.chron.com/immigration/archives/2008/01/post_80.html
Illegal immigrants are people just like Americans. Most of us were immigrants whose families were lucky enough to come here when Ellis Island was still open, and our immigration system was not entirely broken.
For all those who would suggest rounding up Illegals and putting them in concentration camps, you can take your Nazi police state tactics and shove them up your ass.
We need a path to legalization for the 12 million immigrants living here, many who have been here more than a decade.
Lets look at the story of one Illegal Immigrant: Cesar Milan, also known as “The Dog Whisperer”. He came here and built a business that didn’t exist yet. He didn’t take anybody’s job. He is a hard working family man, an entrepreneur, who because of his teaching through his show on National Geographic, he has probably saved thousands of seemingly hopeless aggressive dogs from being put down because of his remarkable ability to teach people how to rehabilitate them. In 2009, Cesar became an American Citizen. The originators of this e-mail would likely prefer that he would have been bussed back to Mexico to wallow in poverty.
12 million illegal immigrants do need our help, they need our help to come out of the shadows so they can start paying taxes. We need these people to have proper preventative medical care so they are healthy enough to earn that tax revenue, and do not show up at the emergency room which ends up costing us a bunch more. We need to dramatically improve our ESL teaching so that these immigrants can learn English so they can best integrate with our society.
To the hateful, intolerant, selfish teabagger birther dickwad who crafted these lies in an attempt to propegate anti-immigrant hate: A big fuck you. Go jerk off to Glen Beck, Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh, asshole. You’re lucky that your movement has been and continues to be a complete failure, otherwise your entire family would never have made it to this country, and would probably still be trapped in some overcrowded diseased shithole ghetto en Europe.
To everyone else: please question and fact-check every statistic you see before you accept it. These kinds of e-mails are nothing more than hate speech.
A person who had the misfortune of being copied on that hate-speech mail responded to me:
“I would say the misinformation in the original email was worth correcting. But it’s also true that Henry came off just as hateful as anyone he was railing against.”
To which I responded:
“This is true: I hate the haters. I have ZERO tolerance for Xenophobia”
And he replied:
“You’re trying to make it appear that you agree with what I said. I didn’t say you hated the haters. That was already obvious! My point was this: That “hating the haters” (especially in the way you expressed it) makes you no better than the people who engage in hate speech.
In other words: your email was just as hateful as the hate speech you protest against. That’s all.
And by the way, not everyone who opposes illegal immigration is xenophobic.”
My somewhat lengthy response:
That e-mail went way beyond opposition of illegal immigration. It was vile, anti-immigrant, hate speech, designed to demonize Mexicans, followed up by typical partisan GOP talking points.
Ever see American History X? This was a lot like the incitement speech that Edward Norton’s character gave right before they busted up the grocery store and assaulted its Mexican workers.
A lot of things bugged me about it:
- One can’t rationally argue against a path to legalization, and complain about illegal immigrants being payed under the table. Unless of course they support radical solutions like roundups, concentration camps, and mass deportation.
- You can hate on Illegal immigrations, but why single out the Mexicans? There’s a lot of other kinds of illegal immigrants here.
- Vilifying Nancy Pelosi for wanting to help Non-Citizens. Why do we help anybody anywhere in this world if we can’t help the people living on our soil?
- The tax on retirement incomes, and the tax on stock market incomes, are not Immigration issues, these are partisan talking points AKA “The politics of personal destruction” aimed at Pelosi (& thus her entire party)
- The rage at the prospect of raising the standard of living of mexican-americans. God forbid!
- The whole “dems are socialists” bit, especially with regard to equalizing of income. Pelosi was referring to the problem of excessive CEO compensation. Context means everything.
- The whole: “IF YOU DON’T AGREE JUST DELETE” oh hell no.
Yes, this was my “Joe Wilson moment”. They lied, and I stooped to their level and for responding in kind with the same sort of ugly insults in one very nasty paragraph. For that that I apologize for polluting your inbox. The thing is that when some people advocate suffering, poverty, and death, and they use lies to support their arguments, I really have a hard time restraining myself from extending my middle finger.
The person who originated this e-mail gives those who justifiably oppose illegal immigration a black eye. Just ignoring it would be apathy, If I were to be silent about it, then I would be accepting its message. Can’t do that.
In closing I’d just like to say that sending mass political e-mails where you can hit “reply to all” is a pretty bad idea. Especially if I’m on your list.