Sotomayor-critic Krikorian Seeks to Hang Healthcare Debate on Immigrants

America's Voice Blog

Posted 06/30/09 at 09:48am

Think Progress' Wonk Room blogger Andrea Nill found this clip of Mark Krikorian (of Keith Olbermann Worst Person in the World fame) trying to pin the problems with our healthcare system, including our "uninsured crisis" on immigrants. Big surprise there.

Mark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a restrictionist "think tank" that plays prominently within the network of anti-immigrant organizations beholden to John Tanton, a man with clear ties to white nationalism.

Here's the video:

According to Nill in Mark Krikorian And CIS Conflate ‘Uninsured Crisis’ With ‘Immigration Crisis,’ Krikorian's claims falsely distort the healthcare debate in much the same way as his now-infamous call for Judge Sonia Sotomayor to change her last name to sound more "Anglo" distorted the debate over the President's Supreme Court nomination's qualifications.

She reports:

Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of the anti-immigrant Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), recently told Michigan's WXMI-GR news that the biggest growth in the uninsured has come from an increase in immigration - both legal and illegal. According to Krikorian, "From 1989 on, more than 70% of the increase in the total number of uninsured people is immigrants or their young kids."

CIS' "findings" were also featured in Jerome Corsi's Red Alert newsletter. Corsi is already well known for authoring two error-ridden anti-Obama books. His "controversial and often bizarre views," include xenophobic government conspiracy theories as expressed in his book, "The Late Great USA: The Coming Merger With Mexico and Canada." Stephen Camarota, Director of CIS Research, told Corsi, "It is not too much to say that the nation's problem with those lacking health care insurance is being driven by the nation's immigration policy." Krikorian is also quoted as saying, "We don't have an uninsured crisis...We have an immigration crisis."

What Corsi, Krikorian, and Camarota all conveniently fail to mention is that there were years during the post-1989 period during which the number of uninsured native-born citizens dropped dramatically. By leaving out this significant piece of information, anti-immigrant zealots are able to make it look as if immigrants were a larger share of the total increase in the uninsured than is really the case.

Nill concludes by citing Dr. Walter Ewing, Senior Researcher at the Immigration Policy Center (IPC), who "further criticizes CIS for muddying the national health care debate with their anti-immigrant agenda." He argues:

Given that nearly 80 percent of the uninsured adults and children in this country are U.S. citizens, it is difficult to fathom how Mark Krikorian can treat this as an immigration issue.

For those who track the politics of the anti-immigration movement, however, this comes as no surprise.

Fixing our broken immigration system would go a long way to not only restoring justice and equity to our labor market, but it would also serve to take one of the biggest (if emptiest) talking points away from pundits like Krikorian.

And when you consider the type of legislation Krikorian and his anti-immigrant allies are looking to block on the backs of "illegal aliens" and their vile "anchor babies," that's no small thing.