Several claims made by anti-immigrant bloggers on FOX and other blog sites were debunked by the LA Times last year. The LA Times wrote that the claims, attributed to a supposed LA Times article, are an internet hoax . Read the blog below. Apparently certain bloggers have not gotten the news flash. They are still posting these so called "facts" and even writing tirades against illegal immigrants based on this mythical article. Internet hoaxes are nothing new and there is even a website devoted to debunking internet hoaxes. www.snopes.com
On Snopes.com I even found a category titled "Obama" and it's devoted to confirming or debunking claims about Senator Obama. Very interesting. Did you know Obama IS NOT a muslim?
What are some of the internet myths you have debunked or actually believed. I once debunked a photo of a GIANT crocodile being loaded onto a old truck by two black men. The photo was emailed to me by a friend exclaiming, "look at this!". The caption on the picture was, "Giant Croc found swimming in New Orleans after Katrina Storm." I knew the croc was far too big to be indigenous to America plus Louisiana has alligators not crocodiles. I noticed the truck was very late model with no license plates. The missing plates reminded me of vehicles I had seen in my trips abroad to third world countries. After a very quick google search I found the original post of the photo. The giant crocodile was captured in Africa.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/readers/2007/11/inter
net-immigr.html
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Internet immigration hoaxProbably five times a week, the readers' representative office gets a question like this one received recently from Harvey Akeson of Tucson:
"Please help me, an e-mail is making the rounds stating the information is from the L.A. Times. It may or may not be true. Can you verify? Thanks."
Such inquiries have come in for more than a year -- most by e-mail, some by telephone. From the beginning, the notes have shown signs of having been forwarded to many others, who then forward them to many others, before one of the recipients decides to check with the alleged source.
The answer is: The L.A. Times never ran such a story.
"If this doesn't open your eyes nothing will!" So begin most of the e-mails that readers forward to us. Though the endings vary -- a typical sign-off is, "Send copies of this letter to at least two other people. 100 would be even better" -- the bulk of the note always consists of 10 "facts" that they are told came from the L.A. Times. The hoax e-mail goes like this:
1. 40% of all workers in L. A. County ( L. A. County has 10.2 million people) are working for cash and not paying taxes. This is because they are predominantly illegal immigrants working without a green card.
2. 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.
3. 75% of people on the most wanted list in Los Angeles are illegal aliens.
4. Over 2/3 of all births in Los Angeles County are to illegal alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal,whose births were paid for by taxpayers.
5. Nearly 35% of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally.
6. Over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages.
7. The FBI reports half of all gang members in Los Angeles are most likely illegal aliens from south of the border.
8. Nearly 60% of all occupants of HUD properties are illegal.
9. 21 radio stations in L. A. are Spanish speaking.
10. In L. A. County 5.1 million people speak English, 3.9 million speak Spanish.
(There are 10.2 million people in L. A. County)
Less than 2% of illegal aliens are picking our crops, but 29% are on welfare.
Over 70% of the United States' annual population growth (and over 90% of California, Florida, and New York) results from immigration.
29% of inmates in federal prisons are illegal aliens.
We are a bunch of fools for letting this continue.
Here's the response we've sent to those who ask:
No article has appeared in The Times with this list. And some of these 'facts' appear to have been misleadingly edited from articles that appeared in the L.A. Times as long as 20 years ago and are now being cited inappropriately. When this Internet rumor started last year, The Times' opinion website looked into this hoax; here is the link to those findings:
http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2007/02/some_
memes_neve.html
One example of how this is inaccurate is the claim that a Times story reported that "over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages." This appears to misquote information from a May 24, 1987, article about the number of people living in garages in Los Angeles County. It reported that, at that time, about 42,000 garages were sheltering about 200,000 immigrants in L.A. County. That article provided detailed information explaining how the figures were arrived at but it did not allude to anyone's residency status.
Most readers thank us for the explanation and promise to get word back to those who forwarded the hoax e-mail. Added Akeson: "This hate stuff is very difficult because most people read it and pass it on without even thinking of facts or the hurt they are spreading."
American racists dominate the anti-illegal immigrant movement and will resort to violence and murder. I believe the hateful rhetoric posted and distributed by hateful anti-immigrant groups and their allies in the news media, such as Lou Dobbs, have inspired the young to attack and kill. The police not wanting to call this attack a hate crime is outrageous. An attack against a black, jewish, or gay person which included racial, or anti gay slurs would have earned a hate crime charge against the attackers. Murdered at 25 by American racist killers who are only teenagers.
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In this photo provided
Crystal Dillman,
Luis Ramirez lies in his hospital bed
hours before his death at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, Pa.. Ramirez,
25, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, died Monday, July 14, 2008 from injuries
he received in a beating in Shenandoah, Pa.
(AP Photo/Crystal Dillman)
http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Mexico-Danville2C-Pa/pho
to//080718/480/38b3ea70b56240b1a56a54bc6c188de7//s:/ap/
20080718/ap_on_re_us/immigrant_killing_students
http://tinyurl.com/5wlq3j-------------------------------------------------------
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Fri Jul 18, 1:24 PM ET
Friday, July 18, 2008 (AP)
Immigrant's beating death exposes tensions in Pa.
By MICHAEL RUBINKAM, Associated Press Writer
(07-18) 11:12 PDT Shenandoah, Pa. (AP) --
Luis Ramirez came to the U.S. from Mexico six years ago to look for work,
landing in this town in Pennsylvania's coal region. Here, he found steady
employment, fathered two children and, his fiancee said, occasionally
endured harassment by white residents.
Now he is headed back to Mexico in a coffin.
The 25-year-old illegal immigrant was beaten over the weekend after an
argument with a group of youths, including at least some players on the
town's beloved high school football team, police said. Despite witness
reports that the attackers yelled ethnic slurs, authorities say the
beating wasn't racially motivated.
Hate crime or not, the killing has exposed long-simmering tensions in
Shenandoah, a blue-collar town of 5,000 about 80 miles northwest of
Philadelphia that has a growing number of Hispanic residents drawn by jobs
in factories and farm fields.
An investigation continues, and no charges have yet been filed, but police
say as many as six teens were involved in the fight, which ended with
Ramirez in convulsions and foaming at the mouth. He died early Monday of
head injuries.
Crystal Dillman, the victim's 24-year-old fiancee, who is white and grew
up here, said Ramirez was often called derogatory names, including "dirty
Mexican," and told to return to his homeland.
"People in this town are very racist toward Hispanic people. They think
right away if you're Mexican, you're illegal, and you're no good," said
Dillman, who has two young children by Ramirez and a 3-year-old who
thought of him as her father.
On Dillman's fireplace mantel hangs a medallion of Jesus that Ramirez was
wearing the night he was beaten. Ramirez had an imprint of the medallion
on his chest, marking where an assailant stomped on him, she said.
Police Chief Matthew Nestor acknowledged there have been problems as the
community - the birthplace of big band musicians Tommy and Jimmy
Dorsey and home of Mrs. T's Pierogies - has tried to adjust to an
influx of Hispanics, who now comprise as much as 10 percent of the
population.
Teenagers have sprayed racially tinged graffiti and yelled racial slurs at
the newcomers, he said.
"Things are definitely not the way they used to be even 10 years ago.
Things have changed here radically," Nestor said. "Some people could adapt
to the changes and some just have a difficult time doing it. ... Yeah,
there is tension at times. You can't deny that."
Police are still interviewing suspects and witnesses. Preliminarily,
though, they have determined that Ramirez, who worked in a factory and
picked strawberries and cherries, got into an argument with a group of
youths that escalated into a fight in which he was badly outnumbered.
"From what we understand right now, it wasn't racially motivated," Nestor
said. "This looks like a street fight that went wrong."
Retired Philadelphia police Officer Eileen Burke, who lives on the street
where the fight occurred, told The Associated Press she heard a youth
scream at one of Ramirez's friends after the beating to tell her Mexican
friends to get out of Shenandoah, "or you're going to be laying next to
him."
Shenandoah Valley High School principal Phillip Andras said he knew little
about the alleged involvement of any football players. A call by the AP to
the athletic director was referred back to the principal.
But the players' possible involvement has added to interest in the case.
Football, along with the town's many block parties and festivals, is a
major attraction; home games typically draw thousands of fans.
Arielle Garcia and her husband, who were with Ramirez when he was beaten
late Saturday, said they had dropped their friend off at a park but
returned when he called to say he had gotten into a fight.
She saw someone kick Ramirez in the head, she said, and "that's when he
started shaking and foaming out of the mouth."
The Garcias said they heard the youths call Ramirez "stupid Mexican" and
an ethnic slur.
Burke, the former Philadelphia officer, said she saw shirtless youths
swarming around Ramirez, called 911 and went outside, when she heard a
youth yell obscenities and make the get-out-of-Shenandoah remark.
Despite the witness statements, Borough Manager Joseph Palubinsky said he
doesn't believe Ramirez's ethnicity was what prompted the fight: "I have
reason to know the kids who were involved, the families who were involved,
and I've never known them to harbor this type of feeling."
(This version CORRECTS the gender of the friend in the 14th paragraph,
beginning "Retired Philadelphia ...".)
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Copyright 2008 AP
FOX viewers do not believe immigration enforcement uses racial profiling of hispanics. Here is another article that challenges that belief. "Your papers please", should be America's new national motto. ------------------------------------------------------
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Does crackdown cross line?
Arizona efforts stir racial profiling claims
By Howard Witt | Tribune correspondent
12:26 AM CDT, May 26, 2008
PHOENIX - The newest tactic in America's quickening effort to gain control of its porous southern border starts with a cracked windshield, a broken taillight or even a failure to signal a right or left turn.
That's all the probable cause sheriff's deputies here in sprawling Maricopa County say they need to pull over a vehicle they suspect might be carrying illegal immigrants.
If the driver or the passengers fail to produce a U.S. driver's license or a proper Immigration visa, if they speak only Spanish, or if they can't otherwise convince the officer they are in the country legally, they are likely to be arrested, jailed and handed off to federal Immigration authorities for deportation.
To Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, these zero-tolerance traffic sweeps, which he recently stepped up in heavily Hispanic neighborhoods across the Phoenix metropolitan area, are a successful tool to root out the undocumented workers that many conservative leaders say have overwhelmed America's fifth-most-populous city just a three-hour drive north of the Mexican border. Arpaio's deputies have arrested more than 500 illegal immigrants so far this year.
RACE IN AMERICA
"We're hitting this illegal Immigration on all aspects of it," said Arpaio, the elected Republican sheriff for the last 16 years. "We know how to determine whether these guys are illegal, the way the situation looks, how they are dressed, where they are coming from."
But to a growing chorus of Hispanic activists, civil rights leaders and Democratic politicians, Arpaio's policy represents a blatant case of racial profiling. It is an extreme example, they say, of anecdotes that have begun surfacing across the country in which local police agencies respond to the national backlash against illegal immigrants by aggressively targeting Spanish-speakers for the offense of "driving while brown."
As a result, Phoenix has surfaced as the latest fault line scarring America's long-troubled racial map.
"We're absolutely seeing a rise in racial profiling," said Cynthia Valenzuela, litigation director for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. "It's simply not legal to use a minor traffic offense as a pretext for investigating Immigration status."
Indiscriminate sweeps
Arpaio's critics allege that both U.S. citizens of Hispanic descent and Mexican visitors with valid visas have been caught up in the sheriff's sweeps and held for hours in special jails until they could prove their right to be in the country. And they say the sheriff's tactics are provoking fear throughout Phoenix's Hispanic community, as well as reluctance on the part of Spanish-speaking crime victims or witnesses to cooperate with police.
One class-action lawsuit already has been filed against the sheriff, and civil rights groups say they are collecting evidence for more.
"If you are of Mexican-American heritage, if you have brown skin, there is nothing you can do not to be stopped," said Mary Rose Wilcox, the only member of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors who has criticized Arpaio's Immigration sweeps and the only Hispanic on the board.
"Deputies are asking for birth certificates. Do you carry a birth certificate with you? Should you have to?" she added.
Arizona's Democratic governor, Janet Napolitano, pulled $1.6 million in state funding for Arpaio's office this month because she said the sheriff's actions "were causing trepidation in the Immigration community."
Last month, Phil Gordon, the Democratic mayor of Phoenix, formally asked the U.S. Justice Department to open a civil rights investigation into Arpaio's tactics, which Gordon said included "discriminatory harassment, improper stops, searches and arrests."
"I understand these are serious allegations," Gordon wrote to Atty. Gen. Michael Mukasey. "As mayor of the city of Phoenix, I must speak out when the rights of our residents are violated and the safety of our neighborhoods threatened."
Under a new city policy, Phoenix police also question anyone they arrest about their Immigration status and refer suspected illegal immigrants to federal authorities, but Gordon has expressly prohibited such questioning during routine traffic stops.
Arpaio, who styles himself as "America's toughest sheriff" and is famous for confining criminals in tented prisons and issuing them pink underwear, scoffs at all the criticism, which he dismisses as politically inspired.
