Blogger Demagogues on Immigration

Jessica McBride says in a post on the AM 620 WTMJ website that Santa Fe's police department is considering hiring illegal immigrants, as she calls them, and cites this story.

That is not correct.

The story says Santa Fe is considering hiring Mexican immigrant police recruits who are not naturalized American citizens, but are in the country legally, and adds that the plan, under review, may not be legal under New Mexico state law.

Says one of the Santa Fe police department recruitment officers:

"Every day, we get approached by young men and women from Mexico who are in the country legally but are not naturalized," [the recruiter] said.

"There is a huge pool of people who are dedicated, hardworking and trying to become citizens of this country. They would like nothing better than to devote their time to protecting the communities that they live in," she said."

The story points out that the US military recruits non-citizen soldiers who then get preference in the path to citizenship - - so using domestic police hirings as a similar route to citizenship sounds like an idea at least worth studying.

To the blogger, and the employer that posts her writing: what's so hard about getting straight in the blog such a key point from the cited story, and why has this posting not been corrected or removed?

(Note: This is the same blogger and blog that has aroused a major controvesy in Milwaukee over her use of the drive-by murder of a four-year-old girl that caused that offensive item to be removed from her blog. Details here.)

The immigration issue is volatile enough without such blatant distortions.