This is one I can’t pin down, which is unusual. I think the problem is the sheer volumn of work MacDonald has churned out in the past few years makes it almost impossible to do a true web search on her. Every instinct I have tells me she’s not ‘kosher’ but I can’t prove it. Anyone as prolifically anti-hispanic and as seriously racist as MacDonald has something in a closet somewhere. The problem is her past is buried so deeply I can’t crack it. She’s squeeky clean, so far. But, someone who is cited so much by Malkin, Vdare, Steven Sailor, Sam Francis, American Resistance, American Renaissance, etc. isn’t a saint. I was finally able to prove she is playing fast and lose with the facts and sourcing on Hispanic culture. Frankly, in my humble opinion, she is probably one of the worst, most biased anti-hispanic source out there today.
When dealing with anything about immigration, the first thing a person needs to know is to look beyond the hype and investigate the credentials of the author of a piece. Heather MacDonald is no exception. In NRO she has an extremely biased, one sided kill piece about the Hispanic family. She’s an expert, right? Well, Vdare has her as part of the libertarian (a kicker right there) Manhattan Institute. And a Source Watch profile reveals nothing that could point to MacDonald’s racism against Hispanics. MacDonald is one of the promoters of the racist, Hispanic Family Values (check out this Vdare which parrots her). I know she is using the racist Myth of Hispanic Family Values from American Resistance, but I can’t prove it.
(Note: The thing that gets me about libertarians and illegal immigration – Libertarians are allegedly for limited government – as little as possible – but the anti-immigration stance many of them take is the ultimate Big Brother. You can’t have it both ways. A true libertarian would let these guys come and go over the border and live and let live. As it is, they are some of the biggest promoters of Draconian immigration laws. Go figure. I’m not bright enough.)
From her profile on One People’s Project (which is quite liberal, but the person doing it is an ex-hate monger so I give him a break) “…A non-practicing lawyer fresh from stints at the EPA and as a clerk for a Judge Stephen Reinhardt in California, Heather MacDonald moved to the city from Los Angeles in 1987 and jumped into the racial tensions going on there at the time. She found herself at a conservative think tank called the Manhattan Institute (MI) This lovely place was founded by former CIA director William Casey and in the past was funded by far right eugenics advocates such as the Pioneer Fund and others, Many of those other backers also backed Hitler’s rise to power. One of them, Chase Bank, has publicly apologized for its support of Hitler, but where today’s hate politics are concerned, MI does not seem so forgiving. They have sponsored eugenics projects, most notably the pro-eugenics book The Bell Curve, a best-selling book that proposed the idea that blacks are mentally inferior. On one website, it is noted that while the Manhattan Institute does not publicly advocate mass extermination or mass relocation of minorities the policies it does promote are mostly about targeting black and Latino inner city populations in such a way as to make relocation an attractive option and elimination a day to day reality. …”
Her immigration numbers are skewed, but you can’t pin her down. The closest I can get is this AZ Central article. “…Nearly two dozen organization members handed lawmakers two-page documents that they called the “real facts.” Richard White, president of the organization, called Pearce’s rhetoric a smear campaign against “a whole people that tends to create division and fear.”The purpose is to advance a political agenda of hard-line immigration reforms by instilling fear in the public and pressure among lawmakers to act, White said.”I hope the public will recognize the song and dance for what it is,” he said.Statistics can be slippery ground, and even the organization’s fact sheet didn’t compare apples to apples as, in one instance, Pearce cited statistics on federal prisoners and the Interfaith Network responded with statistics on prisoners in state facilities.Pearce has said that one-third of federal prisoners are illegal. The Network points out that fewer than 12 percent of those incarcerated in state prisons are Mexican nationals.The Republic found that nearly 28 percent of those incarcerated in federal prisons are not U.S. citizens, according to the Federal Bureau of Prison Statistics. That’s 5 percentage points short of a third and doesn’t take into account foreign-born residents who are in the country legally. Pearce, R-Mesa, said he got the statistic from CNN. Pearce also was called on a statistic that said 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide in Los Angeles target illegal immigrants.But officers at the LA Police Department and Sheriff’s Office say they aren’t sure how that fact was deduced.”I don’t know where those come from,” said Lt. Paul Vernon, who handles public information with the LAPD. Much like in Phoenix, officers do not check immigration status. Neither LA nor Phoenix police departments track the number of illegal immigrants involved in crimes, officials said. The statistic appears to have originated with Heather MacDonald, who is listed as a scholar with the Manhattan Institute in New York. MacDonald could not be reached for comment on Monday.”
And debunking MacDonald’s stats on illegals, CA, crime, and gangs from the LA Times.
“Just the Facts– UPDATED
According to the search service Technorati, at least 130 weblogs have recently posted 10 “facts” about immigration, allegedly coming from the L.A. Times. As Readers’ Representative Jamie Gold has pointed out, this list, which is being forwarded around the world at lightning speed, is a hoax.
We combed our archives to see whether the paper has indeed written anything like these facts, and found just one Op-ed column — by leading anti-immigration figure Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Col.) — that comes close to stating what the e-mail hoax claims. Meanwhile, we’ve tried to assess the veracity of the various statistics from online sources as well as representatives of federal, state, county, and city officials. We’ll continue to post more details as we receive them. Here are the results:
“Fact” 1: 40% of all workers in L.A. County (L.A. County has 10 million people) are working for cash and not paying taxes. This was because they are predominantly illegal immigrants, working without a green card.
LAT citations: None.
Factual basis: The Economic Roundtable, a research outfit affiliated with the Los Angeles County government, concluded in a December 2005 report [PDF] that the low-end estimate for LA County workers working for cash is 322,400 and the high end is 972,500 in 2000. From this, the Economic Roundtable paper extrapolates a mid-range 2004 estimate of 679,000, or 15% of the workforce. (Note that the total workforce of Los Angeles County is about 4.5 million, while the total population is closer to 10 million.)
“Fact” 2: 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.
LAT citations: May 15, 2005 — “According to Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute, 95% of the hundreds of outstanding homicide warrants (and 60% of outstanding felony warrants) in L.A. are for illegal immigrants.”
Similar citations: January 19, 2004
Factual basis: An outstanding warrant is quite a different beast than a regular warrant, so this “fact” left out the key word. We did some more checking on the outstanding warrants point itself. MacDonald stated this in a 2004 City Journal article, and in testimony before the House of Representatives in spring 2005, noting that this came to 1,200-1,500 warrants. One LAPD officer cited the same factoid in the National Review earlier this year, saying that it’s specific to “the first half of 2004″. But Jane Robison, press secretary for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, told us that the D.A. does not keep track of this number; a representative with Detective Headquarters said the same.
“Fact” 3: 75% of people on the Most Wanted List in Los Angeles are illegal aliens.
LAT citations: None.
Factual basis: We can’t locate such a fact anywhere. The Los Angeles Police Department’s most wanted list contains a number of people with unknown or obscured identities, suggesting that tallying the legal status of everyone on the list would be very difficult if not impossible. Ditto for the FBI’s most-wanted list.
“Fact” 4: Over 2/3′s of all births in Los Angeles County are to illegal alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal whose births were paid for by taxpayers.
LAT citations: Jan. 15, 1999 — “As many as 70,000 illegal immigrants a year use state-funded prenatal services.” (Similar citations: Jan. 14, 1999, June 12, 1998, March 6, 1998, Jan. 30, 1998, Jan. 4, 1998, Dec. 18, 1997, Aug. 26, 1997, July 10, 1997, Feb. 6, 1997, Nov. 13, 1996, Nov. 5, 1996, Nov. 2, 1996, OCt. 24, 1996, Oct. 17, 1996)
Feb. 14, 1999 — “Two-thirds of all births here are to foreign-born mothers.” (Similar citation: July 25, 2004 — “40% of the births in California are to foreign-born women.”)
July 7, 1998 — “[Rep. Elton] Gallegly [(R-Simi Valley)] cited a 1990-91 Los Angeles County study that showed that two-thirds of the women giving birth in public hospitals were undocumented.” (Similar citations: Oct. 2, 1995, July 19, 1995, June 11, 1995, Jan. 27, 1995, Nov. 21, 1993, Sept. 13, 1993, Aug. 17, 1993, Aug. 1, 1993, May 28, 1992, Apr. 2, 1992, Oct. 26, 1991, Oct. 24, 1991)
Factual basis: None of these citations establishes the “fact” above. According to the California Department of Health Services, 158,782 babies were born in L.A. County in 2001 (these are the most recent statistics available online). Of these, 99,089 were to Hispanic mothers. That’s just under 2/3 — 62.4% for all Hispanic moms, which would include legal and undocumented mothers from Mexico as well as other countries.
“Fact” 5: Nearly 25% of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally.
LAT citations: May 1, 2005, in an op-ed by Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Col.) — “More than 10% of the inmates in U.S. jails and prisons are illegal aliens, and in California it is more than 20%.”
July 11, 2004 — “Each year, the [Los Angeles] County Jail system processes about 170,000 inmates, and federal officials estimate that a fourth of them are illegal immigrants. But with just a fraction of the foreign-born being questioned, officials say it is impossible to know exactly how many illegal immigrants are in the system and how much the county should receive in federal compensation.” (Similar citations for Riverside County, Apr. 12, 2006; Anaheim city, Nov. 5, 1997, June 27, 1996; Los Angeles County, Jan. 25, 1996, Jan. 15, 1996, July 10, 1995, May 23, 1995; state and county, Nov. 27, 1993, June 1, 1993, Oct. 19, 1992, Oct. 6, 1992, Aug. 4, 1992, Aug. 18, 1991, Dec. 16, 1990, Dec. 4, 1985)
Factual basis: The 25% figure could be approximately correct for state and federal prisons in California, or correct for county, at least as of 2004. But “detention centers” is an extremely broad term that could include all juvenile detention facilities, federal prisons, state prisons, and county jails in California’s 58 counties — making this figure very tough to come by. The San Francisco Chronicle offered a lower figure for state prisons on May 4: “Of the nearly 171,000 inmates crowding state prisons, 22,478, or about 13 percent as of March 31, are undocumented immigrants or are suspected of being undocumented.” The Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group in favor of reducing immigration, offers a lower figure for L.A. County jails: “Deportable aliens comprise 11% of the Los Angeles County jail population costing the county an estimated $75 million a year.”
“Fact” 6: Over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages.
LAT citations: Jan. 31, 1994 — “As many as 100,000 families in Los Angeles County are believed to be living in bootlegged apartments or illegally converted garages.”
May 24, 1987 — “A systematic survey by The Times indicates that about 42,000 garages are sheltering about 200,000 people in Los Angeles County.” (Similar citations: Apr. 3, 1989)
Factual basis: None of these estimates makes clear who among those taking shelter in garages are in the country illegally. No comment so far from county offices. One City of Los Angeles representative said that the last tally was done over five years ago, and found 50,000 to 70,000 illegally converted units in the city of Los Angeles, out of about 800,000 residences.
“Fact” 7: The FBI reports half of all gang members in Los Angeles are most likely illegal aliens from south of the border.
LAT citations: May 15, 2005, in an op-ed by attorney Carol Platt Liebau — “Of the membership of the notorious 18th Street gang, estimated at 20,000, fully 60% are illegal aliens, according to a 1995 report by the state Department of Justice.” (Similar citations: Jan. 19, 2004, March 25, 2000, June 11, 1997, Dec. 17, 1996, Nov. 21, 1996, Nov. 17, 1996)
Factual basis: Heather MacDonald of Manhattan Institute stated that “No one knows for certain the percentage of illegals in gangs, thanks in large part to sanctuary laws themselves.” She does offer some statistics in the City Journal:
A confidential California Department of Justice study reported in 1995 that 60 percent of the 20,000-strong 18th Street Gang in southern California is illegal; police officers say the proportion is actually much greater. [...]
The leadership of the Columbia Lil’ Cycos gang, which uses murder and racketeering to control the drug market around L.A.’s MacArthur Park, was about 60 percent illegal in 2002, says former assistant U.S. attorney Luis Li.
Even if you accept the 18th Street Gang estimates, which would be notoriously difficult to determine with accuracy, that’s just one gang in a city where several prominent gangs — including the Crips, Bloods and Aryan Nation — are not largely comprised of immigrants, at least not from “south of the border.”
“Fact” 8: Nearly 60% of all occupants of HUD properties are illegal.
LAT citations: None.
Factual basis: No comment yet from HUD, and the only statistic we found online is at FAIR, and it is for only the state of California:
The state Housing and Community Development department has prepared new screening rules based on the welfare reform legislation adopted by Congress in 1996 that would ban illegal aliens from public housing programs. The HCD estimates that as many as 5 percent of 25,000 housing units could be affected.
“Fact” 9: 21 radio stations in L.A. are Spanish speaking.
LAT citations: None in the last 10 years.
Factual basis: Estimates vary by source: one website lists 15 Spanish stations out of 78, another lists 18 out of 83.
“Fact” 10: In L.A. County, 5.1 million people speak English. 3.9 million speak Spanish (10.2 million people in L.A.County).
LAT citations: None.
Factual basis: The Census reports that as of the year 2004, 3.9 million people in L.A. County speak only English at home; 3.7 million speak primarily Spanish at home”
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