The Quote Below—More Misinformation from the Media
Ten years ago, Nashville faced a test about what kind of city we would become.
The decision to reject English-only set the course for our future and cemented that being welcoming would be part of our ethos as a booming, multicultural city. . . .
Each week in Nashville, ICE is terrorizing immigrant neighborhoods and ripping residents away from their families and communities.
As the federal government ramps up immigration enforcement, the state legislature has continued their efforts to make life harder for immigrant and refugee communities. In the face of historic assaults, many Nashvillians have asked what the city can do to protect immigrant families and defend our values.
That’s why the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC) developed Beyond Welcoming: A Platform for Immigrant Inclusion for the Next Government of Nashville and Davidson County.
We drafted this comprehensive platform with the input of 5,000 immigrants and refugees and 40 of our community and organizational partners to serve as a road map for the next mayor and Metro Council.
The first recommendation in this plan is to dismantle the deportation pipeline in Nashville.
Since Trump’s inauguration in 2017, immigrant families in Nashville have been urging the city to update the policies of Metro departments to ensure they aren’t helping deport residents. . . . In [our] platform we also urge the city to terminate the 20-year-old agreement that allows ICE to use our local jail as an immigrant detention facility. . . . This agreement has no place in a welcoming city.
From protesting family separation to defending DACA, Nashville’s values have consistently been on display. . . . In the era of Trump and amidst his brutal campaign of mass deportations, cities across America are faced with a profound and historic test: how can we protect residents and cast a new vision of belonging in our communities? – Nashville Needs to Go ’Beyond Welcoming’ and Be Truly Inclusive of Immigrants in the City, Stephanie Teatro, Guest Columnist, Tennessean, 8/5/20 [Link]
Fact Check of Quote Above: The writer of this guest column is the leader of an “immigrant rights” organization. Does the pro-immigration Tennessean allow guest columns to spokesmen of immigration restrictionist groups? Probably not.
The author, Stephanie Teatro, seems to think that Nashville would have been “unwelcoming” if it had approved a law to make English the language of the city’s official business. Is it really a breach of hospitality for a government to set standards for people who enter its jurisdiction? Hospitality is a two- way street. The people who enter have an obligation to the people who let them enter.
The requirement of English encourages legal immigrants to integrate into their new communities. This is reasonable, and it should be no problem for legal immigrants who are supposed to be proficient in English if they want to become citizens.
But these don’t appear to be the immigrants that Teatro has in mind. The “immigrants” she references are ones subject to deportation, which means that they are in fact illegal aliens. This is a common verbal sleight-of-hand by illegal alien advocates. They take the word “immigrant,” with its generally positive associations, and try to paste that word on foreigners who live here in defiance of our laws.
The author also distorts the truth by making the deportation of illegal aliens seem outrageous when in fact it is a legal and proper function of law enforcement. Requiring people to obey our laws is not an act of “terrorizing” them. If we want to have a sovereign country which can decide who comes here and who doesn’t, we must have an effective “deportation pipeline.”
The author speaks about defending “our values.” And just who is this “our” to whom she refers? Whatever this group is, it probably doesn’t include patriotic Americans who want their country governed by the rule of law.