Right-wing pundit Ann Coulter re-affirmed her opposition to immigration reform Wednesday in a column saying the passage of the recently proposed bill would be “the end of America.”
Though the immigration reform proposal was written by a bipartisan group of eight senators, Coulters seems to have it in for Cuban-American Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) in particular.
She accuses Rubio of lying about whether the reform will secure the border or whether the government will generate more tax revenue, and accuses Rubio of leading a cynical Republican drive to score political points with Latinos.
“If you think Republicans are Hispandering now, wait until the children of 20 million illegal aliens start to vote,” Coulter writes. “Rubio's amnesty isn't just bad for America, it's the end of America.”
Coulter grossly overestimates the size of the undocumented population, as she’s been known to do in the past.
An estimated 11.1 million undocumented immigrants live in the United States as of 2011, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. The rate of immigration from Mexico currently stands at net zero or less.
Most economists agree that immigration reform will have a positive economic impact on the country, though mass immigration also increases job competition in some sectors with the native born.
"There are many ways to debate immigration, but when it comes to economics, there isn't much of a debate at all," Adam Davidson, the co-founder of Planet Money, wrote in the New York Times Magazine in February. "Nearly all economists, of all political persuasions, agree that immigrants -- those here legally or not -- benefit the overall economy."
In contrast to the Associated Press’ recent decision to abandon the term “illegal immigrant,” Coulter refers to the undocumented with the disparaging term “illegals” five times in the 800-word piece.
Coulter has inaccurately portrayed Latinos as dumb, lazy, and welfare-dependent in a series of articles since the reelection of President Barack Obama in November.
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