VICE News uses one illegal immigrant to push anti-Trump propaganda

VICE News’ sob story about an illegal immigrant forced to cross legally into Canada to escape the evil Trump was truth to Leftist, but propaganda to me.

Illegal immigrant immigration sanctuary citiesThe other night, I found myself sitting with a Progressive friend and watching VICE News, which is a Bill Maher production that runs on HBO. In other words, a savvy viewer understands that the producer is a hard Left Progressive who is pushing his beliefs on a cable channel that has a relentlessly hard Left orientation. VICE’s story about the sufferings an illegal immigrant forced to go to Canada was no exception.

The story (not a news report, but a story) focused on a poor El Salvadoran man who’s been living in the US illegally for seventeen years; got married to a woman who is here legally, although she’s apparently not an American citizen; and has two young children. The children, presumably, have been enjoying the benefits, such as they are, of growing up in America.

According to the immigrant (whose name I have forgotten), were he to return to El Salvador, he would have only two choices: join a gang or watch his family be killed. However, with Donald Trump in office threatening actually to enforce the laws of the land, the immigrant is too frightened to stay in America and has decided, instead, to go to Canada. Although Trump has been president for less than two months, there’s already a new underground railroad through Leftist churches to make it easy for him to do so.

As the story progresses, we see the immigrant sitting alone in a Buffalo safe house; we hear the minister going on about his church’s role in the slave-era Underground Railway; we see his cute children badmouthing Trump; and we see his entire family decide to make the journey to Canada so that they can stay together. As part of all this, VICE, with tears it its eyes, and without any apparent irony, talks about the difficult hurdles he’ll have to cross because of Canada’s strict immigration laws. Canada’s strict border enforcement is somehow mutated into a good thing because it has the possibility of mercy, while America’s attempt at reinstating existing border laws just a fraction as strict as those in Canada is the ultimate evil.

I shouldn’t be surprised at this risible lack of logic. After all, this kind of reasoning comes from the same people who demonize cigarettes and champion pot smoking. They’ve moved beyond the stricture that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. To them, any consistency is a sign of retrograde, conservative, troglodyte thinking.

Unlike my friend, I’m not a Progressive. I got irritated watching this tale of woe. Indeed, I came down hard on the side of the rule of law. I pointed out to the friend with whom I was watching that, the immigrant’s sob story notwithstanding, I was more interested in the American sob stories VICE didn’t show. These are the stories of the people killed or raped by illegal immigrants, the acts of pedophilia the do against America’s children, as well as the sorrowful stories of those American blacks who are consigned to gang-filled slums (the same types of slums the El Salvadoran refuses to return to) because illegal immigrants have squeezed them out of low wage jobs.

It seems to me that a government’s first duty is to its citizens, rather than to all the hard luck cases in the world. The fact is that the vast majority of the world is a hard luck case. Bringing everyone here will not raise the world up; it will bring us down. The best that we can do is to export our values in the hope that other countries can rise up too and that they can get the benefit of their citizens’ intelligence, ambition, energy, and innovation, rather than sending those same citizens away to live as illegals in another land sending money home to prop up corrupt and inefficient governments.

In many ways, what was more interesting than the VICE segment itself was the fact that the Progressive friend with whom I was watching could not wrap her mind around the fact that this, in fact, was propaganda. “It’s the truth,” she insisted. “This is as evil as Jim Crow.” Her emotions were engaged and she was unable to distinguish between slavery and border control; resisted any comparison between Canadian border control and American border control; and said it was unfair to talk about crimes some illegals might have committed, because this particular El Salvadoran was clearly a good man.

To her, there was no point of view, no propaganda, no possibility of “alternative facts.” There was only the narrative.