The Mainstream Media, Immigration and the Ostrich Principle

Unfortunately, silly editorials are a standard feature of today’s mainstream journalism. However, the Washington Post’s editorial board seems to be probing the outer limits of absurdity. It recently published an opinion piece titled “Trump’s Crusade Against Immigrants Is an Attack on America.”

Mainstream reporting on immigration issues tends to be based on the “ostrich principle”: tout the positive aspects of immigration. But when it comes to anything negative, stick your head firmly in the sand.

And that’s exactly what the Post editorial board does in this piece. In essence, its position is this: All immigrants in all circumstances are good for the United States. Therefore, deporting immigrants is bad for America, because it’s bad for the immigrants. If that logic seems a bit circular, that’s because it is.

Apparently, in the bubble of rainbows and moonbeams in which the Post’s opinion editors live, all immigrants are well-meaning entrepreneurs who bring wealth, culture and diversity to the communities in which they settle. They do those mythical “jobs that Americans won’t do,” and “harvest America’s crops, build its cities, care for its young and elderly, and found some of its most buoyant companies.” (To hear the opinion editors at the Post talk, one wonders what hard-working Americans do all day.)

That’s why according to the editorial board, deporting any immigration violators exacts a “humanitarian price,” in “shattered communities and families.” Of course, they either don’t know, or don’t care about, the hundreds of American communities and families that have been shattered by lax immigration enforcement.

They make no mention of:

• Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, the illegal alien who re-entered the U.S. after multiple deportations, then shot and killed Kate Steinle.
• Sergio Jose Martinez the illegal alien who came back to the U.S. after he was deported multiple times, then viciously raped two women in Oregon.
• Jose Victor Chaparro-Saenz, the drunk-driving illegal alien who killed 14-year-old Rhyan Moody when he ran a red light and crashed into her family’s car.
• Rogelio Martinez, the Border Patrol agent who was beaten to death with rocks while investigating an illegal border crossing.

It’s true that you can’t judge a population of millions of immigrants by just a few bad apples. But that’s exactly the point, it is also entirely disingenuous to describe all immigration in laudatory terms while conveniently ignoring the demonstrably negative effects of immigration that have made the news just within the last few weeks.

It’s time that the Post woke up and pulled its head out of the sand. President Trump is doing exactly what Americans expect their chief executive to do, enforcing our laws, rather than ignoring them. In other words, he’s putting the interests of Americans first. Perhaps the Washington Post should do the same.