Democratic politicians cannot stop being weird (and racist) when talking about illegal immigration, using the very same “dog whistles” they allege Republicans use.
In calling on the federal government to allow New York City to hire illegal immigrants for open city jobs, Mayor Eric Adams went with an unfortunate example. “How do we have a large body of people that are in our city, our country, that are excellent swimmers and at the same time we need lifeguards?” Adams asked.
This is what Adams’s Democratic colleagues would call a dog whistle, a reference to illegal immigrants crossing the Rio Grande between Mexico and Texas. It is entirely possible that he meant nothing by it, and that vacant lifeguard jobs were simply the first city job openings that came to mind. That wouldn’t stop Democrats from crucifying a Republican for saying it if the roles were reversed, especially on the heels of a similar misstep where Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) said that black children didn’t know what computers were.
But Adams’s blunder cuts to a deeper problem Democrats have when it comes to illegal immigration. So often, the argument that “illegal immigrants do the jobs Americans won’t do” quickly slips to treating illegal immigrants as an underclass that labors away in unsavory jobs without the protections that citizens would get, a problem perpetuated by Democrats encouraging illegal immigration through lack of border enforcement and through invitations to “sanctuary cities.”
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Take Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) comments about Florida when she said that farmers need immigrants “to pick the crops down here.” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said that we need immigrants to “pick the food we eat,” “rebuild our communities,” and “clean our homes.” And who can forget the best example of this, when Kelly Osbourne attacked then-presidential candidate Donald Trump on The View with what she thought would be an applause line: “If you kick every Latino out of this country, then who is going to be cleaning your toilet, Donald Trump?”
This doesn’t come from the GOP, where Republicans simply argue that people immigrating to the country should do so legally. It is Democrats encouraging illegal immigration, justifying it and lumping illegal immigrants in with all immigrants, and then suggesting that we need immigrants because “who else will clean toilets and pick crops?” If I didn’t know any better, I would suggest that Democrats have their own demons to wrestle with before they run around accusing everyone else of using “racist dog whistles” on this or any other issue.
