Peter Canellos of the Boston Globe offers an article with the title "Fear of foreigners roils Iowa/Angry rural voters voicing far-fetched theories". It attempts to downplay the impacts of illegal immigration and basically calls those who oppose illegal immigration hicks. The device used is to contrast the supposed "far-fetched" comments of some with the more reasonable (to the Boston Globe) comments of a local restaurant owner who supports "low-wage workers". Some of the "far-fetched" comments actually have a grain of truth.
It was here, in November, at a restaurant called Camp David, that residents peppered Senator John McCain of Arizona with questions about his view of illegal immigrants. One woman said she'd heard that Mexicans were flying their flag above the Star Spangled Banner and that children of illegal immigrants refused to sing the same kindergarten songs as American children. After quietly refuting the woman's claims, McCain offered that he had never seen such emotion over a political issue. Strong feelings about illegal immigration are still palpable in Iowa Falls, and even far-fetched theories about illegal immigrants get passed from person to person. "They come over and they even get a tax break," Jane Vetter, who works at Pizza Ranch, said. "Then they want to change our language over to Spanish and then our national anthem, they want to change that. It just upsets me. We work our butts off and don't get a tax break."... ...the tax breaks for illegal immigrants that enrage Vetter don't exist; most illegal immigrants pay full taxes, even if they don't file income-tax returns.
By saying that McCain "refuted" those claims, the Globe is implying that McCain was right. In fact, he was not.
1. In at least one 2006 case, students from another nearby school raised the Mexican flag over an upside down American flag at Montebello High School near Los Angeles (youtube.com/watch?v=OT1KCXjEDcQ, youtube.com/watch?v=oRKxjpldM5Y). And, in another well-known case, a U.S. vet cut down a Mexican flag that was flying over the U.S. flag in Reno (youtube.com/watch?v=Px1PTsEdC1Y). These are well-known incidents; is Canellos just ignorant or was he trying to deceive? 2. Canellos doesn't explain how those who work off the books and/or who don't file returns don't thereby get a tax break. 3. The tax break may have been refering to a provision of one version of the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill that forgave 2 out of 5 years of federal taxes for those who enrolled in the program. 4. At least one illegal immigration advocate (Nativo Lopez of MAPA) has allegedly admitted that he wants to make Spanish the primary language of California (opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110003960). 5. The infamous Spanish-language version of the U.S. national anthem (npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5369145) appears to have been primarily a commercial venture, but it was also released to coincide with the May 1, 2006 pro-illegal immigration rallies. The goal wasn't to replace the English-language version, but one of the goals was definitely to support illegal immigration.Representative Ron Paul, Republican of Texas, is running a radio spot vowing to stop the "North American Alliance," a term often used by conspiracy theorists for what would happen if there were no borders with Canada or Mexico.
The usual term for that is the "North American Union"; whether Paul uses that term or not isn't known. However, one doesn't have to be a "conspiracy theorist" to note that many powerful people seem to be pushing that scheme. On a recent U.S. tour, Vicente Fox promoted that concept at least three times, A Zbigniew Brzezinski/Henry Kissinger-associated group recently testified to Congress on the benefits of such a scheme (worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55830), the Council on Foreign Relations and others have published papers promoting the scheme, and there are even maps on Canadian government websites showing the NAFTA Superhighway which apparently only "conspiracy theorist" (and the Canadian government) believe in (worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59105).