The New York Times op-ed headline online is (at least until someone at the Times figures out how damning it is)…

“My Wife’s Killer Was Not an ‘Illegal Immigrant’”

Author Andy Ostroy‘s wife, actress Adrienne Shelley, was murdered by an illegal immigrant, and the fact that the Times thinks this headline is a responsible one speaks volumes to the increasing dishonesty from Democrats and the news media on the issue of illegal immigration.

Ostroy ties himself into logical and ethical pretzels while explaining his kindly open-mindedness over the murder of his wife by “a 19-year-old undocumented Ecuadorean construction worker” who feared she would report him and have him deported. Writes Ostroy:

“Given the anger and grief I still feel, I could easily be seduced by Donald J. Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric that is the cornerstone of his presidential run. “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists,” he said as he began his campaign in 2015. And in these final weeks before the election, rather than tacking to the middle, he seems to be doubling down. “We’ve got some bad hombres,” he said in last week’s debate, referring to immigrants who commit crimes.”

First, Donald Trump’s rhetoric is anti-illegal immigrant rhetoric, not “anti-immigrant.” The intentional blurring of these two very different categories is a strategy of deceit. Any writer who engages in it has marked himself as untrustworthy, and any publication that does the same has also flagged itself as dishonest and biased. The use of the intentionally vague term “undocumented” immigrant is similarly proof of unethical advocacy. The immigrants at issue are here illegally, hence they are illegal. If they had documentation that they were illegal, they would still be illegal, and if they had documentation that they were legal, that would be additionally illegal, since the documents would necessarily be false.

Second, such rhetoric is the only responsible rhetoric there can be, since it is existentially irresponsible for any nation to pretend that breaking its laws is anything but undesirable and wrong.

Third, Ostroy’s own account proves Trump accurate. Illegal immigrants are bringing crime: his wife’s murderer did exactly that. (Trump did not say that all illegal immigrants brought additional crimes along with their initial one of breaking the immigration laws, but the Big Lie is thoroughly in place that he did.) Yet Ostroy refuses to be “seduced” into believing that an illegal immigrant brought murder into this country and his life, so he denies the fact that the man was an illegal immigrant, and the self-evident fact that the term “bad hombre” describes him to a fairtheewell. The amount of self-delusion and denial of reality it requires to hold this particular absurd position must be exhausting.

Ostroy goes on…

“But Adrienne was not murdered by an illegal immigrant, per se. She fell victim to a depraved killer who simply happened to be an undocumented immigrant. It is an obvious distinction, almost too obvious, but it’s an important one to consider as the country goes further down the dangerous path of demonizing those not born here.”

Oh! She was murdered by an illegal immigrant, but not by an illegal immigrant per se! That makes perfect sense! Actually, it makes no sense at all. The killer didn’t just happen to be an “undocumented immigrant,” that is, an illegal immigrant. Ostroy could legitimately argue that he just happened to be black, or Ecuadorean, or short, or a construction worker, but the fact that he was here illegally is completely relevant and absolutely related to her death. The man was already a law-breaker, and had demonstrated by his manner of entering the country that he possessed less than the necessary respect for our laws, or laws generally. Moreover, if he were not here illegally, he would not have murdered Ostroy’s wife of anyone else.

Is Ostroy lying, stupid, deluded, corrupted, or does he just presume, along with the Times, apparently, that his readers are?

And again, we have the deceit of the intentionally omitted key fact. Nobody, including Donald Trump, is “demonizing those not born here.” Without quibbling over the term “demonizing,” it is those who are not born here and in the country illegally who are being demonized, and justly so. Why does Ostroy skip that part? Why do his editors skip that part? They do it, I am certain, because their position makes no logical, legal or ethical sense on the merits, so they distort the issue.

More distortion:

“At his rallies and during the debates, Mr. Trump has painted a dark picture of an America overrun by foreign criminals who come here to rape, pillage and murder our innocent civilians.”

I see: many come here AND rape, murder and engage in other crimes, but they didn’t come here TO do those things. Thank you, sir, for that fine distinction, and may I ask, “How the hell do you look at yourself in the mirror?”

I suspect the answer is that his adoption of progressive cant on this subject, much of it cynically linked to the desire to dominate a growing voting bloc, just as Republican passivity on the same issue is driven by the desire by its corporate funders to continue paying unconscionably low wages, has permanently damaged his ability to apply reason to the topic. Here’s more:

“His reason for killing Adrienne, and the relatively lenient sentence he received, certainly feeds Mr. Trump’s xenophobic, fear-mongering narrative. But beyond the rhetoric, there’s no clear cause and effect. His rationale was no different from that of an American citizen who in the act of a crime kills his “witness” to avoid prosecution and imprisonment. Attributing his heinous act to his immigration status dilutes the more relevant truth that he lacked the ability to know right from wrong and had zero respect for human life.”

There’s no cause and effect! He killed Adrienne because he was here illegally and didn’t want to be deported, but the fact that he was here illegally was irrelevant to the murder! This is the level of critical thinking, apparently, that is deemed sufficient to justify a forum in the New York Times.

“His rationale was no different from that of an American citizen who in the act of a crime kills his “witness” to avoid prosecution and imprisonment.”

Yes, and what was the crime that he committed murder to cover-up? It was the crime of entering the country illegally.

“Attributing his heinous act to his immigration status dilutes the more relevant truth that he lacked the ability to know right from wrong and had zero respect for human life.”

Here, let me fix that sentence for you, Andy:

“Attributing his heinous act to his illegal immigration status highlights the more relevant truth that his upbringing in a different culture may have impeded his ability to know right from wrong, and that his lack of respect for U.S. laws was mirrored by his zero respect for human life.”



Andy’s distortion of logic and facts really gets rolling now. I added the letters to make unraveling this mess easier:

(a)”Yes, we have an immigration problem that is in desperate need of reform. (b) Yes, some illegal immigrants commit crimes, some of them violent. (c) But so do blacks, whites, Asians, Christians and Jews. (d) Mr. Trump often claims that two million undocumented immigrants have been convicted of crimes, but in fact the figure is actually 176,000, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (e)The reality is, Americans have appreciably more to fear from their fellow citizens than from undocumented immigrants.”

A distortion and rationalization carnival!

a) By “reform,” Democrats and progressives mean “a system that allows current illegals to stay and benefit from breaking the law, and that promises not to inconvenience or punish new lawbreakers, as long as the immigration laws are the only ones they break. You know. Reform.”

b) None of which would have occurred if the illegal immigrants weren’t here in the first place. By the way, you slipped up and said “illegal.” Watch it.

c) So do blacks, whites, Asians, Christian and Jewish citizens. But see, Andy, at least they belong here. That’s the issue.

d) Ah! So “some” isn’t a handful, but a minimum of 176,000, which is approximately 176,000 too many. Of course, it’s much worse than that. A relatively small percentage of felonies are reported, especially sexual assaults. An even smaller percentage of those reported lead to arrests, and for obvious reasons, illegal immigrants are more difficult to track down. So how many crimes are committed by illegal aliens? I’d estimate 250,000, to be conservative. That’s a lot of victims to shrug off, but Andy shrugs off the murder of his wife, so he’s equal to the task.

e) This is the “more people die in car accidents than in terrorist attacks, so we shouldn’t worry about terrorism” argument. It is, and has always been, an uncommonly stupid and dishonest argument. Because there are deaths that we can’t prevent, we shouldn’t do anything about the deaths we can prevent. Brilliant. When an argument stoops that low, you know the advocate has nothing.

For the rest of the op-ed, Ostroy pivots to the standard “this is a nation of immigrants” deflection (this is also a nation of laws) and the legally and ethically irrelevant appeal to emotion of extolling “the millions of foreigners who have come to the United States in search of a better life. “

Once again he intentionally combines disparate groups, so to disapprove of lawbreakers is to disapprove of legitimate immigrants. Moreover, all lawbreakers are “in search of a better life.” Thieves, embezzlers and burglars believe that more money will give them better lives. Killers think that eliminating human obstacles to their objectives will lead to a better lives. Gangsters and traitors are after better lives, the same with tax cheats, frauds, and people who violate government policies while endangering U.S. security so nobody can see their e-mails. Wanting a better life is the desired end: it doesn’t validate or justify lawbreaking, and illegally entering the country is still breaking the law.

Ostroy’s column is a leading candidate for the most inept and dishonest advocacy piece of 2016. It should be no surprise that the topic is illegal immigration.