By Paul Nachman
11/17/2010
The National Council of La Raza [NCLR] is upset with Tennessee state representative Curry Todd:
Just when you thought extremist rhetoric couldn’t get worse, it did. Late last week, a Tennessee state representative named Curry Todd compared immigrants to rats. … On November 9, during testimony from Finance and Administration officials at a meeting of the Fiscal Review Committee, Todd asserted that giving U.S. citizen children of immigrants health coverage was a license for immigrants to “go out there like rats and multiply.” [Video link is from the original.]
Of course, Todd didn’t specifically refer to Hispanics, but I can agree that Todd’s language wasn’t appropriate for an official in an official setting. However, being a hyper-sensitive Hispanic, NCLR’s A. Elena Lacayo went on in this Breaking Alert to also lambaste what Todd later offered as an alternative:
Representative Todd has not apologized, only saying that he should have used a more “palatable” term like “anchor babies.” This reprehensible phrase for United States citizens is equally offensive and unacceptable.
So "anchor baby" is forbidden, too. Except that it shouldn’t be. An official, and surprisingly frank, U.S. State Department fact sheet from February 2009, Fraud in the Refugee Family Reunification (Priority Three) Program, contains this notable sentence:
It is important to note that the initial DNA testing was limited to members of families applying for the P-3 program, and not between the applicants and the anchor relative in the United States.
Got that? "Anchor relative"! And if you read the fact sheet, you'll see that "anchor" is used there with precisely the same meaning as we intend when we employ it in "anchor baby": The anchor individual anchors his or her relatives in the United States. (Another commonality: Both anchoring situations are generally to the detriment of the U.S. citizenry.)
So … an arguably legitimate complaint from La Raza promptly devolves into officially-confirmable bleating silliness.
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