Liberal commentator Tavis Smiley insisted this week that fewer immigrants wouldn’t do much at all to help blacks and minorities find work, because minorities have always gotten the short end of the stick when it comes to jobs and employment in America.
Smiley’s remarks came as he interviewed anti-immigration author Ann Coulter, who he said has made “absurd” arguments that illegal immigrants are taking jobs from Americans.
“Your argument suggests that if these other persons weren’t here, that somehow we would be fairer and better by those who are already here,” said Smiley. “The evidence doesn’t support that. And that’s why black people have been toiling for as long as they have been. Before somebody came across the border, black folks still weren’t being respected. They were still the last hired and first fired. The unemployment rate was still triple, quadruple the national average.”
“I could do this all day. The health disparity still exists. Before anybody came across the boarder, negroes were still being treated the way they’re being treated right now,” he added.
Coulter responded by saying taxpayer dollars used to address immigration could be used instead to help the black community.
“I’m not buying it for two reasons,” Smiley said. “One, because the problem existed long before we had a basic immigration problem. The problem of disrespecting fellow citizens already existed. For example, we got people running across the border everyday. Negroes are still getting shot in the streets by white cops all the time. Every other day, you see that.”
Coulter interjected, “And by Mexicans.”
Smiley also said immigrants aren’t taking jobs away from American citizens. If anything, he said, they’re taking jobs that no one wants.
“Let me tell you why it’s absurd,” he said. “I’m so tired of hearing this argument. I don’t know any black folk, I certainly don’t know any white folk or anybody else, who’s standing in line because they want to pick grapes.”
“Where are the lines of all these Americans who they’re taking these jobs from?” he asked.
Coulter, who is currently on tour to promote her new book Adios, America: The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole, asserted that the only reason grape-picking jobs exist is because there are “lazy” farmers who refuse to mechanize. She added later that fast food, cleaning, landscaping and retail jobs, which have in the past gone to American citizens, are now being taken by illegal immigrants.
