Estimados Racistas de MAGA: Los Inmigrantes de Estados Unidos Son Buenos Para el País – Pero Ustedes No Lo Son*

As mentioned previously in this space, I’m trying to put together a streak of non-political blogs. Prior to today, the streak had reached exactly two. The blog I’m writing now skates on the edge of that goal. In one sense it is political – but only because some folks have turned a non-political issue into a political one. That’s their problem, as far as I’m concerned. I consider this more of a social/economic/cultural blog than a political one, so I am making the call that the non-political blog streak continues.

The 59^th NFL Super Bowl took place last night, and for the first time in my life I wasn’t able to watch it live. For that, I can thank an ongoing dispute between the streaming service I subscribe to (Fubo) and the company that broadcast the game (NBCUniversal). These two enterprises have come to loggerheads over money that I have no interest in researching further. All I know is that because of their spat, NBCUniversal has blacked out all of its programming on Fubo – including NFL games, and including the Super Bowl.

For Fubo subscribers who wanted to see the game live, you either had to subscribe to another service, hit a sports bar, or crash a Super Bowl party. None of those options appealed to me. I’m not about to spend one more thin dime on another streaming/TV service. And because temperatures here in northern New Jersey have been hovering around negative-20 degrees F (-29 C) – I shit you not – there was no way I was going to venture out into the arctic chill to watch the New England Damn Patriots play the Seattle Seahawks.

So, I had to sit out the live version of the game. That’s never happened before – and I’ve been watching the Super Bowl since it first aired in 1967. Even during our years in London I would at least catch the beginning of the live game around midnight or so.

This year, I’m reduced to watching the NFL Network’s replay. But since that didn’t air until 3:30 in the morning my time, I had to record it to watch later. I caught the first half today (Seattle, 9-0). I’ll finish watching it later tonight.

To keep from finding out the winner, I left myself little notes to avoid visiting any news sites. But it still didn’t work. I hopped on to a political site last night, very briefly, figuring it would be safe from any Super Bowl spoilers. But it ran headlines above the article and that’s where I caught a brief glimpse of “Seahawks Take…”

So, I guess the Seahawks won. I don’t know how yet, so I can at least look forward to a little drama (I hope). I was pulling for the Seahawks, anyway, so it will be fun to watch them win.

Or, more precisely, to watch the Patriots lose.

As far as I’m concerned, the Patriots are the Evil Empire thanks to the legacy of Brady, Belichick, Kraft & Co. The only good thing about them now is that their excellent young quarterback, Drake Maye, is a fellow homeboy from my hometown of Charlotte, NC. His dad, Mark, was a standout Charlotte football player 40-odd years ago. Many Charlotteans of my generation remember Mark well. I wish his son well – but not his son’s team.

*****

Regardless of the outcome, this Super Bowl will forever be remembered less for the game itself than for the halftime show that contributed to yet another huge cultural divide in our endlessly divided country.

The headline act for the halftime show was Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican rapper whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio. He sings his lyrics in Spanish (as to be expected by a Puerto Rican), is unapologetically proud of his heritage, and has become a major lighting rod in the nation’s current battle over immigration.

Americans of the Caucasian/MAGA tribe have been mightily pissed off ever since they learned Bad Bunny would headline the halftime show. (These sadass folks are pissed off about all sorts of things, but never mind that…).

The Super Bowl is an unofficial holiday over here in the USA. Maybe the biggest holiday. Millions of Americans from coast to coast put on lavish Super Bowl parties and spend all day gorging on food, drink and merriment.

It’s semi-sacred, our Super Bowl, and the halftime show has become iconic in its own right. This century alone, headliners included pop music heavyweights such as Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Prince, Beyonce, Janet Jackson, Justin Timberlake, Bruce Springsteen, Usher, Coldplay, Kendrick Lamar and Rihanna.

Now, I can’t claim to be an expert on Bad Bunny. I’m not sure I even knew who he was before his Super Bowl selection turned millions of raging, perpetually aggrieved lunatics into even bigger raging, perpetually aggrieved lunatics.

I’m not going to dive too deep into the particulars of it all. If you want to know more, you can read about it here or here or here or 41,000 other places.

Suffice it to say that some Americans simply could not bear the thought of a Puerto Rican rapper taking the Super Bowl stage and dousing the world with Spanish lyrics, all while gently pushing back against the MAGA administration’s racist, violent, lawless, and increasingly unhinged anti-immigration agenda.

In response, MAGA Nation decided to put on its own, alternative, “pro-America” halftime show at a different location, headlined by Kid Rock – a washed-up, no-talent asswipe if ever – and backed by Turning Point USA, the fake Christian organization now led by the fake-Christian widow of a slain right-wing influencer.

Here are a couple of hilarious things about the dueling halftime shows:

1. Turning Point USA billed its show as the one for “real” Americans, even though Bad Bunny is, in fact, a real American. Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, which makes Mr. Bunny a native-born U.S. citizen.
2. The MAGA-in-Chief reportedly raged that “nobody understands a word” that Bud Bunny said during his show, apparently unaware that the U.S. is home to more than 40 million Spanish speakers, or that the Super Bowl is a global event, and there are more native Spanish speakers in the world than native English speakers.

And while we’re at it: English is not even the “native” language of America. Thousands of different languages were spoken here for thousands of years by millions of indigenous peoples before English settlers arrived in the 1600s.

But no matter. The MAGA crowd went into its usual toddler tantrum when the NFL chose the Spanish-speaking Bad Bunny to headline its Super Bowl halftime show. Funny, you didn’t see this kind of backlash when actual non-Americans headlined previous halftime shows (e.g., the aforementioned McCartney, Stones and Coldplay).

What can be said for sure is that Bad Bunny is the most streamed musical artist in the world, based on Spotify data, and the NFL is nothing if not aware of how many potential fans he could reach.

Kid Rock, on the other hand, is probably not even the most streamed guy in his own GD house.

Here’s another fact: Bad Bunny is bigger and more influential than MAGA — and the NFL knows it.

And U.S. immigrants are more useful to this country than MAGA ever has been or will be.

*****

As luck would have it, the very week the Super Bowl aired, the Cato Institute released an exhaustive study on the economic impact of immigrants in the United States.

Before I go on, let me just point out: The Cato Institute is not some leftist, anti-American group. It’s a free-market, Libertarian think tank – the very kind of high-IQ organization that Republicans in the United States used to latch on to before they went all stupid on us a few decades ago.

You can read the study here, if you want. But for our purposes, here are some quick highlights:

• Immigrants to the United States have reduced federal deficits by $14.5 trillion since 1994.
• Every year since 1994, when data collection began, immigrants have paid more in taxes than they received in benefits from the federal, state, and local governments. The fiscal benefits have continued to rise, reaching their highest level ever in 2023.
• Immigrants pay more in taxes than the average American due to the type of work they do and how much work they do. As a result, immigrants have been better at generating revenue for the government than the average person.

One thing this data does is undercut all those bullshit arguments about how immigrants are a drain on the system. In fact, they are the exact opposite – they help prop up the system in a big way.

The real drain on the system are native-born Americans who rely more on government services than they pay into those services. Most of these Americans live in red (Republican/MAGA) states rather than blue (Democrat/non-MAGA) states.

For proof, consider this data from a pair of Yale University researchers:

• From 2018 to 2022, individuals and organizations from blue states contributed nearly 60% of all federal tax receipts but only received 53% of all federal contributions to states in the form of either direct payments, grants, contracts, or wages.
• Meanwhile, red states were only responsible for 40% of federal tax receipts but received 47% of all federal contributions to states.

In short: MAGA states drain the U.S. economy. Non-MAGA states prop up the U.S. economy.

*****

Let’s be clear about one thing: There is no “immigration problem” in the United States. That’s a fake trope made up by mostly white people who simply want a reason to demonize others who don’t look, talk or think like them.

This is not a new problem, by the way. A certain segment of the native-born population has always sounded the alarm about the mortal threat of their country being invaded by the Chinese, Jews, Japanese, Caribbeans, Central Americans, South Americans, Muslims, East Asians, South Asians, Pacific Islanders, Africans, whatever. The same angry paranoia didn’t necessarily apply to white European immigrants, with the possible exception of the Irish in the 1800s.

Luckily, the U.S. government has an immigration system that allows for people from all over to come here – mainly because immigrants are sorely needed to advance our economy, culture, and collective IQ.

Despite all the current screeching about immigration, the number of immigrants has actually fallen considerably over the past three decades. According to the Migration Policy Institute, the number of legal immigrants peaked in 1991 (under a Republican administration) and has mainly trended lower in the decades since.

Meanwhile, data from the Center for Migration Studies found that since 1990, the number of undocumented immigrants peaked in 2000-2001 and trended lower for the next decade. Although that number started to rise around 2020 or so, it’s still below the peak.

In other words, we are not suddenly being overrun by immigrants. Instead, we’re just being overrun by racist, anti-immigration hysteria.

Most of us have bigger problems to worry about than immigrants. Personally, I’m more concerned about gun-crazed white boy mass shooters/serial killers than I’ll ever be of immigrants. I believe the MAGA movement is a much bigger danger to this country than people crossing the border looking for a better life.

The good news is, I’m not alone. The anti-immigrant MAGA movement is becoming weaker and less relevant with each passing day, just like their dumbass leader. In a few years they’ll be shoved back into the dark corners of U.S. society, where they belong.

And Bad Bunny, or someone like him, will still be fighting the good fight, reminding America and the world that immigrants represent a brighter future, while those who oppose them represent a much darker past.

*Dear MAGA Racists: America’s Immigrants Are Good for the Country – But You Aren’t

Image: Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl. I did not take this image. Instead, it magically appeared on my blog….