Swine Flu: Conservatives Blame Immigrants

Conservative media hosts, including Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck, have placed the blame for the spread of swine flu to the United States squarely on the shoulders of undocumented Mexican immigrants. Some even suggested yesterday that Mexicans were purposefully carrying the virus across the border to sabotage the United States.

There's no basis for either claim -- in fact, news reports and health officials suggest that Americans traveling to Mexico likely carried the disease home. For example, several students at the infected school in New York had recently come back from a spring break trip to Cancun.

Rear Adm. Anne Schuchat, M.D., the interim deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's science and public health program, suggested that Americans who visited Mexico recently brought the disease back with them: "I know that we have confirmation of disease in people who have traveled to Mexico, and I don't know the numbers, but I know that that is definitely the case in some of our cases, and that's an important factor to consider." Media reports indicate that U.S. swine flu victims had recently traveled to Mexico.

Media Matters documents:

On Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that stricter border control was not necessary at this time. That would be a very, very heavy cost for what epidemiologists tells us would be marginal" in terms of containing the virus, she said on NBC's "Today" show.

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Comments

[JoTexasBorderCountry]

Illegal immigrants? Last night, local news here in El Paso, right across the River from Cuidad Juarez, reported that NO swine flu cases have been reported in El Paso or Juarez, and that Homeland Security currently has no plans to close the border. If the border were closed, many people who work in Juarez and drive across daily from Texas would not be able to go to their jobs. Mexico's economy is linked to our own. It is just the worst sort of hate-mongering and racism to blame illegal immigrants for the swine flu. But the media often doesn't get the stories accurately. On the same day that it was reported on msn.com that Mexican and U.S. troops were having a positive effect on the drug cartel wars in Mexico, the local news stations reported one torture death in El Paso, probably linked to the cartel wars, and five on the streets of Juarez.

[dcrinaz]

This is another instance in which the right-wings' racism is showing.

[LauraNo]

They hate. It's what they do. It's ok though, there's a place waiting for them...

[tel8034]

Of course they would blame immigrants .................. The rethugs are so desperate these days, that they will grasp onto any wisp of a thread to find something to WHINE about and to BLAME for their sorry lot in life.

Of course they would not consider the possibility that Americans who recently visited Mexico may have caught the flu there, and brought it back home with them.

Nor would they listen to the reports that investigations are underway into a company located in Mexico (A subsidiary of Smithfield Foods - the world's largest pork packer and hog produced) jointly owned by Mexicans and Americans, to determine if they could have been the source of the outbreak, because of their unsanitary waste disposal practices, which polluted the water bodies, and which could have in turn, led to the disease outbreak .

The swine flu outbreak is just an excuse to bring up the immigration issue, and to find something to whine about and to blame, instead of focusing on the fact that their party is slowly disintergrating ........

With a 21% spproval rating for the republican party, and the defection of Specter, they should be concentrating on restoring their party, rather than getting worked up over the "immigrations are the cause of the swine flu outbreak non-story".

[mcfried]

Wow Malkin and Beck aren't even trying to hide their racism and bigotry anymore. Listening to them is starting to sound like some crazed neo-nazi group or a clan meeting, Yuck - just yuck

[tel8034]

When did Malkin and Beck ever try to hide their racism and bigotry? ................ They are very proud of being racicst and bigoted............... It's their badge of honor.

[LKV]

Get real I mean really what a crock of dodo. These idgiots will use anything they can to speak out against immigrants and don't care anything for truth or facts.
We have become a global economy that means we are also a global infection waiting to happen. There is no way to stop the spread of a illness with out shuting down the whole world. This illness has nothing to do with immigration illegal or legal so get off the hate express and learn facts.

[PreciousNarnia]

They are wverry...wverrry afraid!!

[oldfolks50]

What would one expect of Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck? When you think about it, how could Arlen Specter be on the same side of the table with fools like this? The one thing we can depend on is that somethng stupid will fall from the mouths of these two--if not these two, then Limbaugh, Hannity, Bachmann, Coulter, Steele, Palin, Levin, or one of the others will step up to the plate. And, please, someone tell Norm Coleman that its OVER!!

[swo68]

Fox News just finished reporting it was likely from Americans traveling to and from Mexico.

[tnfit78]

You can't keep a terrible lie going forever in the face of actual facts.

[LKV]

They will try!

[PoliticalAmazon]

27% of Americans (the last poll I read) believe Sadam Hussein is responsible for nine-eleven.

27% of Americans (again, the last poll I read) believe Obama is Muslim.

Don't underestimate the gullibility of the American people.

[sepiasiren]

OMG--I think I will have to write that one on a calender somewhere:

FOX News report an actual fact...

Too stunned to finish speaking...

[swo68]

Too dumb maybe...

[dollbaby]

Ok...so are all the students and families who visited during dptrng brek illeg laliens? Give me a break. Stuff happens.

[saxmaniac]

Our local fm radio hate-meister spewed this for his entire show yesterday. Unfortunately, every caller
agreed with him, and some even more virulent (pun intentional). Of course anyone who disagrees with him never gets on the air anyway.

[Mintcondition]

Just think, the downfall of the reCons started to surface with the nomination of a . . . dare I say it . . . while hand cover my face a black man. Oh nooooo!!! Now all the hate that has been boiling and seething right at the surface has escaped. Thanks President Obama. Keep up the good work.

[poco767c]

Who didn't see this coming? My outrage is not that it was said, just that is was so predictable.
At least be creative bigots. For example, "dirty mexicans are plotting to kill all our chickens with lasers. "

[4evryoung]

"Travel restrictions to Mexico?" I thought this was caused by illegal immigrants?

MAKE UP YOUR MIND.

[K8KZ]

There are also those many bloggers on TeamSarah that honestly think that Obama himself is out there spreading it and that someone he shook hands with died two days later. I guess this is the first flu outbreak on the internet right? So many crazies out there posting crap.

[RRG64]

I think I read that somewhere, that`s what happens when you touch an angel of death, you die two days later.

[LKV]

{{{LOLLOL}}}} Oh thinks for the laugh!

[blukittie]

Typical

[theotherfringe]

Let them not forget that it was their disease-carrying, immigrant ancestors who traveled here to the New World, infecting those who were native to this land. They weren't poor, either. They had the means to get to American and prosper.

[foxbat]

Irony of ironies ... of course, that part's typically left out of most history books or the Native Americans are blamed for having "inferior" immune systems.

[PreciousNarnia]

LOL...you know they don't want to hear the truth. But they will blame it on people of color every, every single time. And no one can refute that one.