Chris Powell: Why don’t Conn. journalists ask key questions about immigration?

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Connecticut's television stations seem to prohibit their reporters from asking critical questions even amid brazen provocations.

Nothing else well explains how a TV news reporter covered another protest against immigration law enforcement the other week, this one at City Hall in New Britain. 

No protesters denied that most of the people recently apprehended and detained by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Connecticut were in the country illegally. Instead all the talk at the protest was about how unfair it is for illegal immigrants to have to obey the law. 

So should there be no immigration law?

No one quoted by the TV reporter was asked -- and yet for viewers watching closely, video showed the story the reporter was failing to pursue.

Signs and banners carried by the protesters read “No borders, no cages, no ICE, no more deportation" and “Abolish ICE, no detention, no deportation."

Protesters carried a Palestine flag and chanted “free, free Palestine." What exactly did Palestine have to do with immigration law enforcement? Did the protesters want the people who are trying to annihilate Israel to be freely admitted to the United States so they can bring their theocratic fascism to bear against Jews and infidels here? Are all today's protesters in the United States part of a cult aiming to bring the country down? For to open the borders and have weak immigration-law enforcement again, as under the previous national administration, would be to erase the country.

The TV reporter didn't ask the protesters. She just gave them a lot of free airtime to propagandize about their idea of justice without having to defend it.

Not that print journalism does much better. Connecticut's original “sanctuary city," New Haven, keeps getting away with anything that supports illegal immigration. 

The other week the Connecticut Public news organization celebrated the Elm City Resident Card, issued by city government, as “a symbol of inclusion" even though it was created in 2007 precisely to hinder immigration-law enforcement -- to provide illegal immigrants with a document implying legality and helping them get housing and bank accounts.

New Haven city government and especially its school system are under great financial strain because of the hundreds and perhaps thousands of illegal immigrant children attending city schools and needing extra services, like tutoring in English and remedial education generally. Being short of money, the city just closed a school and eliminated staff positions.

But the financial consequences of illegal immigration to New Haven city government and state government have yet to be investigated journalistically, though state financial aid to New Haven is, like state Medicaid benefits, part of state government's blank check for illegal immigration. New Haven could save millions of dollars by not  being a "sanctuary city" just as state government could save tens of millions by not being a "sanctuary state."

New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker boasts about the housing construction his administration has been facilitating. He wants the city to gain 10,000 more housing units over the next 10 years and to increase its population by 14,000 to exceed 150,000 and thus become the state's largest city.

Of course, Connecticut badly needs more housing. But for whom is New Haven building housing -- for legal residents or more illegal immigrants? Mayor Elicker has not been asked journalistically.

Housing construction in New Haven would do little to relieve the state's shortage if it was filled by more people needing Elm City Resident Cards. Indeed, Connecticut's housing shortage and the state's high housing prices result in part from illegal immigration, for which state and municipal government have made no provision.

The problem here isn't that all immigrants are bad or even that all illegal immigrants are bad. The problem here is that there are serious costs to subverting immigration law as Connecticut and New Haven do, that the sanctimony that excuses illegal immigration doesn't address those costs, and that they won't be addressed as long as journalism keeps failing to pose critical questions.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).