Desperate Housewife Explains Immigration

Actors get a lot of grief for being political – from Jane Fonda, Daryl Hannah and Susan Sarandon to Alec Baldwin and one of those other ubiquitous Baldwin boys, among others.

Activist stars are not something that’s really ever bothered me. If an actor can use his/her celebrity status to build awareness for an issue and work for good, that’s cool. There are numerous examples. To name just a few, Alexandra Paul has worked on overpopulation issues for years; Robert Redford has been a long-time advocate for environmental issues, and Sting created an organization to help save rainforests in South America.

But now I’m bothered – in fact, completely annoyed – with former “Desperate Housewife” Eva Longoria since she’s jumped on the amnesty train. If only she’d stayed on Wisteria Lane!

Listen to Eva’s erudite comments on immigration here.

Eva says the problem with immigration reform is “messaging.” Sure. Let’s just “reposition” and “reframe” the discussion, and all will be well. The Associated Press decision to not use the term “illegal immigrant” is a great start for Eva, no doubt.

Well, there are a lot of problems with what’s being billed as immigration reform, namely, that it’s reform in name only. What the U.S. is facing is yet another amnesty that will continue growing our population unsustainably and will encourage more illegal immigration.

Already, there have been news reports of increased illegal border crossings since amnesty talks ramped up. And according to analysis of Census Bureau data by the Center for Immigration Studies, if immigration continues at the rate the U.S. has been experiencing, population will increase by 41 percent by 2050.

Eva continues talking about messaging, saying, “When we message to mainstream America, which is Latinos …” Maybe that one was some sort of Freudian slip?

And if you can’t buy into immigration reform as “a moral imperative,” she’s ready to sell you the message of “economic imperative.”

“Our country would suffer greatly if we don’t fix this,” Eva warns. She neglects to mention that the country already is suffering greatly by bearing the huge financial costs related to a massive influx of poor and poorly educated illegal aliens who exert tremendous pressure on government services.

Further, she bags on the U.S. for its alleged promotion of “monolingualism.”

By virtue of past supremacy of Britain and the U.S., English has become a standard for conducting business globally. That’s just the legacy of economic success. But take a look by country at languages spoken, and it breaks out along country lines and by population size. The country with the largest population is China, so not surprisingly the most spoken language is Mandarin. Spanish comes in second, with English a close third. Hindi and Arabic follow – again, not surprising, language follows population size.

A country remains unified for a number of reasons, and a common language is one very important unifying factor. No one would argue against the benefits of being multilingual. But that’s not really what’s at the heart of Eva’s comment. We have a growing population that speaks only Spanish in an English language-dominant country. Too many divides in a country ultimately will pull it apart.

Eva’s most comedic line is, “The xenophobia that’s out there is like, ‘There’s going to be a Taco Bell on every corner.’”

Maybe she’d just watched “Demolition Man,” the 1983 Sylvester Stallone movie, in which Sandra Bullock’s character says, “Now all restaurants are Taco Bell.”

Let’s hope for a debate: E. Longoria vs. Ann Coulter. Like matter meeting anti-matter, maybe then we’d see two extremes annihilated.