Jay Severin, a radical right-wing talk show radio host from Boston, has been indefinitely kicked off the air after making some brazen comments, including calling Mexicans “primitives” and “women with mustaches and VD” who “leech” off the U.S..

More specifically, Boston’s WTKK-FM decided to suspend Jay Severin after the following comments sparked deep concern among Mexicans and other Latinos in Boston:

So now in addition to venereal disease and the other leading exports of Mexico — women with mustaches and VD — now we have swine flu. … We should be if anything surprised that Mexico has not visited upon us poxes of more various and serious types considering the number of crimminalieans already here.

When we are a magnet for primitives around the world-and it’s not the primitives fault by the way.  I’m not blaming them for being primitives, I’m merely observing they are primitives–[W]hen scoop up some of the world’s lowest of primitives in poor Mexico and drop it down in the middle of the United States. Poor, without skills, without language, not share our culture, not share our hygiene. … It’s millions of leeches from a primitive country. … Now they are exporting a rather more active form of disease which is the swine flu.

As was reported earlier this week, “fact-free, anti-immigrant” hysterics Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck, and Joe Arpaio all decided to pin the blame for the current outbreak of swine flu in the US on the same target they usually choose when assigning responsibility for any social, economic, political, or natural disaster: immigrants.   Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) exploited the death [by Swine Flu] of a 23-month-old Mexican child in the U.S. and mistakenly accused the deceased infant of possibly being an “illegal alien” in a deplorable attempt to call for the closing of the U.S. – Mexico border.

In fact, the child was in the U.S. because his parents brought him on a short visit to see family members in Texas. Most known cases of swine flu are arising in people who have either legally traveled to Mexico or have been in close contact with someone who has.  As anti-immigrant groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform, Americans for Legal Immigration, California Coalition for Immigration Reform, the San Diego Minutemen and various Save Our State groups have sent a “barrage of emails” encouraging supporters to exploit the current public health crisis, Dr. Carlos Del Rio of the Rollins School of Public Health and the division of infectious diseases at Emory University’s School of Medicine has stressed that closing the U.S. – Mexico border could actually elevate the danger our country currently faces:

…Many items that we routinely use in the United States are produced in Mexico and closing the border would have a crippling effect to the United States.  For example, in the event of a serious flu outbreak in this country there would be a need for mechanical ventilator deployments to hospitals. The national stockpile has sufficient ventilators, but the necessary circuits that are needed to operate them are not produced in the United States but in Mexico, so having them come across to this country is critical for taking care of critically ill patients in the United States.

If immigration restrictionists were really interested in protecting our borders instead of simply shutting foreigners out, they might point out that the best way to secure the border would be to divert economic migrants to legal ports of entry.  As Joel Hunter, a church pastor who spoke about the humanitarian need for immigration reform at a congressional hearing yesterday, pointed out, “A broken [immigration] system tempts many to predatory practices…The urgency for immigration reform that yields efficiency and compassion cannot be overstated because it is so overdue.”  As noted by witnesses and Members of Congress at yesterday’s hearing, any long-term solution at the U.S. border must include reforming immigration-and a great majority of the American people agree.

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