Anti-Immigration Rhetoric in the United States: Veiled Racism? Mona M. Shattell and Jose Villalba Shattell, M. , & Villalba, J. (2008). Anti-immigration rhetoric in the United States: Veiled racism? Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 29(5), 541-543. Made available courtesy of Taylor and Francis: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713669522 ***Note: Figures may be missing from this format of the document It seems like a day does not go by in the United States without hearing about immigration on televised news broadcasts, print news stories, radio talk shows, or Internet blogs. Immigration, more specifically “illegal immigration,” is a hot topic in the U.S., perhaps fueled by the fact that 2008 is a presidential election year. Furthermore, since the issue of illegal immigration tends to divide constituents into two distinct camps (i.e., those opposed to it and those tolerant of it), political candidates for local school boards and county commission vacancies to gubernatorial and U.S. Congress and Senate seats continuously stir political debate with unfounded sound bites, and quick “facts.” Consequently, much of the immigration rhetoric is anti-immigration. We contend that this anti-immigration sentiment is not a true fervor for the law, but instead is veiled racism. There is no doubt that the U.S. needs to address immigration through immigration reform, but the strong, and at times vitriolic, discussion is eerily similar to the anti-non-White, non-Protestant, rhetoric “discussions” of the past. This type of negative, hateful, sentiment has contributed to a 40% increase in the number of hate groups in the U.S. since 2000 (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2007). The post- 9/11 U.S. and its “war on terror” assuredly contributes to these anti-immigrant sentiments. Take, for example, a letter to the editor that appeared in Greensboro, North Carolina's daily newspaper, the News & Record. In this letter to the editor (Moschetti, 2007), the author implied that a homogenous city is a better city (and the author was not advocating for an all-Hispanic or Latino/a, or an all African American city). Moschetti's not-so-veiled implication that non-diverse, that is, White people, are not “dropping out of school, doing drugs, joining gang[s], [and] having multiple children that they cannot afford” points toward ignorance, xenophobia, and racism. Interestingly, most individuals who align themselves with these opinions and patterns of thought would reject the notion that these statements are “racist,” opting instead to explain that they are simply stating “the facts” and that there is nothing discriminatory about their stereotypic comments. Unfortunately, the negative impact on U.S. immigrants of examples of veiled racism, like the one above, pale in comparison to the detrimental nature of institutional racism prevalent in social systems, such as schools, media outlets, the justice system, and the health care system. One need not look too far to see the manifestations of racism, discrimination, and prejudice as they take the form of mental and physical health disparities, staggering poverty rates, and higher illiteracy rates for members of minority groups (including immigrants) when compared to their Caucasian peers.