Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham revived the nativist myth that “fanatic” supporters of immigration reform, which she identified as the National Council of La Raza, are motivated by "Reconquista" -- a movement that believes Mexico has a right to reclaim land it lost in the southwestern United States. She played on those fears, that immigrants will overrun the United States, to support her contention that English “is in decline” and is “actually a sign of jingoism.”
On her radio show, after a caller stated that immigrants “have learned to game the system” and that there are parts of Colorado she cannot go into because she doesn't speak Spanish, Ingraham replied:
INGRAHAM: No, your language is gone. Your language -- in fact, your language is not only in decline, the English language, Chris, it's actually a sign of jingoism. Because remember the La Raza is all about -- the movement underneath La Raza, which defines the race - right, translates as “The Race” -- is: This is our land. You took our land. We're coming to take it back.
That's what the fanatics really think. That's not what Paul Ryan thinks, but that's what those people think. And Nancy Pelosi and La Raza are licking their chops about this immigration reform.
Conservative media figures have repeatedly attacked the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) to discredit the immigration reform movement and have tried to smear the group as racially motivated. NCLR, which has been lauded as “one of the nation's most respected Latino organizations,” previously refuted several of the most inaccurate claims, including the fact that translating “La Raza” to mean “the race” is "factually incorrect."
Moreover, as The American Prospect noted, the notion that immigrants don't learn English is “a myth,” writing: “Today's immigrants from Asia and Latin America are following exactly the same pattern of linguistic assimilation as their predecessors from Northern and Southern Europe, and at a comparable rate: Their children tend to be bilingual, and the third generation produces largely monolingual English speakers. In other words, across time, linguistic assimilation takes care of itself.”
As PBS explains, one goal of American nativists for centuries has been “to eradicate minority languages and discourage bilingualism.”
Ironically, Ingraham has previously mocked the accented English of an immigration protester, saying she would have preferred the woman speak in Spanish so she could better understand her.