Univision anchor: Obama’s executive order ‘a triumph for the Latino community’

As the opening act before the Latin Grammy Awards tonight, the only broadcast network which will carry President Barack Obama’s remarks announcing unilateral immigration reform will be the Spanish-language network Univision.

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That network’s lead anchor, Jorge Ramos, has not even made a pretense of displaying some semblance of objectivity when it comes to the president’s forthcoming actions. “It’ll be difficult for Republicans to reject executive action on immigration and not to be seen as anti-immigrant and anti-Latino,” the news anchor tweeted in a display of his characteristic lack of regard for America’s constitutional tradition and the separation of powers.

“If Republicans really want immigration reform in Congress, they’ll have many months to do it before executive action kicks in,” Ramos later threatened in a tweet. “Your choice.”

These and other remarks caught the attention of Time Magazine’s Michael Scherer who profiled who he called the “bilingual journalist agitator” ahead of tonight’s announcement.

When asked for his thoughts on Obama’s upcoming order, Ramos heaped praise on Obama and suggested that Hispanics as a whole will be the beneficiaries of the president’s decision to override Congress.

“It’ll be a triumph for the Latino community,” Ramos wrote to Scherer in an email. “It’ll demonstrate our newfound power. This is not something that we got; this is something that we fought for.”

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How impartial.

For Ramos, the importance of the move was difficult to overstate. “This will be the most important immigration measure in 50 years—since the 1965 change in immigration law. In terms of numbers, it’ll have a wider impact than the 1986 amnesty,” he continued. “Although, it’ll be temporary, Republicans will have a very hard time rejecting it and not being seen as anti-immigrant or anti-Latino. Also, this will have a tremendous impact on the 2016 presidential campaign.”

Ramos went on, however, to suggest Obama has been too timid. “We have at least eleven million people who are in this country as undocumented, without papers,” the Univision anchor wrote. “So if you’re only going to help two million, it is not enough.”

In a comic twist, however, Ramos told Scherer that he considers himself an unprejudiced broadcaster who would never seek to nudge his audience to support one party over another:

The limit is, I am a registered Independent. I would never say to whom I vote. I would never pressure anyone to vote for one party or another. That would be way too much.

Not only is this “journalist agitator” an advocate, he thinks you are too dense to notice.

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One wonders, however, just what community Ramos believes he is advocating for. If one takes the most recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll at face value (NBC News Senior Political Editor Mark Murray hopes you do not), Hispanics are generally lukewarm on the prospect of Obama’s immigration order. Just 43 percent of American Hispanics support Obama’s unilateral action on immigration compared with 37 percent who do not.

Final thought: Republicans are regularly scolded by the left and the White House for prejudging Obama’s executive order. They say, and some GOP lawmakers agree, that it is appropriate to reserve judgment until all the details of Obama’s maneuver are known. Does the same admonishment extend to those who prejudge this executive order to be a “triumph” for the Latino community, or is that just the kind of prejudgment that the White House likes?

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David Strom 6:40 PM | April 18, 2024
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