Nevada Official, Shirley Matson, Reprimanded for Using Bigoted Language to Describe Immigrants

America's Voice Blog

Posted 03/28/11 at 03:37pm

Nye County, Nevada Following in the footsteps of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Virgil Peck, and the Three Amigos on Immigration (Reps. Smith (R-TX), Gallegly (R-CA), and King (R-IA)), all of whom have been using their elected positions to hate on immigrants, Shirley Matson, a tax assessor in Nevada, found herself in the hot seat last week when she decided to jump in with some incendiary comments of her own.

The local Pahrump Valley Times reports:

The Nye County tax assessor, whose controversial stance on illegal immigration erupted into public view last week, will have a chance to plead her case in front of county commissioners on Friday.

An agenda action item suggests that commissioners may attempt to discipline Matson. She used her office computer and her elected position to request that sheriff’s deputies check the immigration status of Hispanic workers building the county’s new jail.

The Pahrump Valley Times discovered emails sent from Matson’s private email address to local residents, including prominent current and former town and county office holders, that described illegal aliens in extreme language — she called illegal aliens locusts, and pregnant Latinas the country’s worst enemies, and even seemed to suggest that uneducated Latinos are the cause of Autism and other developmental disorders.

And the Drudge Retort’s DethSpud reports some of the more [horrifying] specifics:

A Nevada county tax assessor sent emails referring to "dirty filthy Mexican/Latino illegals," compared illegal immigrants to locusts and wrote, "These young girls will spread their legs to anyone to get an anchor baby growing in their bellies so they can illegally cross the border and suck up the U.S. citizen tax base resource everywhere they go in the U.S."

Yet Ms. Matson claimed that she’s not a racist, nor is she sorry (or smart) enough to apologize for her hateful comments. According to her, as reported in the same Pahrump Valley Times article, “this isn’t trumped up stuff.”

Really? Because it totally sounds like it is and apparently, the county commissioners thought so too. On Friday of last week, they voted (unanimously) to reprimand her. MSNBC reports:

Commissioner Dan Schinhofen said Matson's apparent viewpoint is: "They look Hispanic, so they must be illegal. Do you see where that could be seen as a bigoted statement? It's bigoted to me."

Matson told commissioners it never dawned on her that her statements might be construed as racially insensitive. She said her email to DeMeo had nothing to do with the issue of illegal immigrants, but was an attempt to protect the county. She recounted working for a San Diego construction company that was fined millions of dollars for hiring illegal immigrants.

"I wanted to save the county embarrassment," Matson said.

She didn't.

Like Matson, a few others have recently created media frenzies around some of ludicrous statements they've made relating to immigrants and immigration. A few weeks ago, a Republican state representative from Kansas, Virgil Peck, said that we should shoot undocumented immigrants from helicopters, and Mark Krikorian, of Center for Immigration Studies fame, stated that we should strip Puerto Ricans of citizenship. Fortunately for us, the new conventional wisdom on immigration in Washington, DC, is that if the Grand Old Party (GOP) and its spokespeople don't tone down their anti-immigrant rhetoric, Latino voters, who will play a key role in the 2012 election, are sure to jump on the anti-Republican Party wagon. Then people like Matson and Peck won't have a platform to stand on at all.

(For those who are skeptical, need we remind of you with this example from recent history: bashing immigrants didn't work so well for Sharron Angle in last fall's Senate race. In fact, Latinos are credited with giving Harry Reid his margin of victory).