Immigration Bill Failed: Xenophobes Do Victory Dance

The email flew into my Inbox within hours of the immigration bill going down in flames in the Senate. “Immigration Bill Killed; Minutemen Claim Victory! Interview Op” crowed the headline. On Rush Limbaugh’s website the headline read “We Did It: Amnesty Bill Goes Down. Enjoy our victory.” Limbaugh and the Minutemen claimed they had shut down Washington, forced a meltdown in the Senate phone system. They certainly made “amnesty” a dirty word. The immigration bill might be dead but the monsters that were exhumed to kill the bipartisan bill aren’t going to fade away that easily.

These are old ghosts that have haunted America for all its history. It’s a familiar story, the schizophrenia of a country that has needed immigrants to build its railroads and swimming pools but has never wanted them to get into its gene pool. It’s not a story of the American little guy versus out-of-touch fat cat politicians in Washington as Patrick Buchanan has claimed. It’s a more sinister story about media as the sneering bully, when in the guise of being just a mouthpiece for millions of ordinary Americans, it gives xenophobia and immigrant-bashing a veneer of respectability and Pew ratings. It’s prompted much hand-wringing now but the script is America’s hoary Passion Play.

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