By Debbie Schlussel
Apparently, Tom Brokaw missed the lines of Americans applying for jobs at the Swift meat packing plants, last week.
Because, tonight on NBC , at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, Brokaw–who should have been put out to pasture long ago–presents an hour-long, drivel-filled “news” special on illegal aliens.
He and NBC claim that the show will debunk “myths” about illegal immigration. But instead, they perpetuate them. From NBC News, here are some of the claims Brokaw will make tonight on the unfortunately-named “Tom Brokaw Reports: In the Shadow of the American Dream” (should really be called, “Tom Brokaw Distorts: Trampling on the American Dream”):

In our report on illegal immigration Tuesday night, December 26, at 8 p.m. on NBC, “Tom Brokaw Reports: In the Shadow of the American Dream,” several points are indisputable [DS: “indisputable”?]:

1. In many parts of the country immigrants are doing the work Americans no longer want to do, especially the hard work of manual labor at construction sites.
2. In our reporting we discovered that most of them are paid a fair wage – $14.00 an hour for an entry level construction job, and that they are paying state and federal taxes through withholding. (Sure, some employers pay cash off the books but most we encountered are trying to play by the rules).
3. While local residents are conflicted about the spreading Hispanic culture – language and music – they agree the immigrants are very hard workers and in general have good family values.

Really? Like this guy’s values?
NBC & Broke-jaw continue:

We can build a high fence, send illegals back, crack down on employers and it won’t end because it is about survival and a piece of the American dream, a powerful lure for immigrants from all over the world for 200 years.
It is a growing problem and it requires urgent action in Congress because in the meantime all the pressure is on local law enforcement, school and health administrators and employers.
A sovereign nation must have control of its borders and a great nation must have a systematic, legal way of filling its labor needs.

Translation: Stop enforcing immigration laws, let’s have amnesty.
President Bush and the amnesty crusaders need to send a giant kiss to Tom Brokaw and NBC. Because he delivered them a giant Christmas gift (if a day late) of propaganda that hardly tells the story.
Again, where was Tom Brokaw at last week’s lines at Swift, featuring a plethora of Americans doing this “work Americans no longer want to do”? And where is Tom Brokaw at the plenty of jobs being reported upon left and right–including at Tyson–where aliens are driving wages way down, where alien contractors are accepting far less and driving Americans out of jobs and businesses?
Even New York Times television critic Neil Genzlinger writes that this is a “pro-immigrant program” and that Brokaw tells his subjects what he wants them to say:

“Americans don’t want this work,” Mark Gould, the company’s president, says bluntly of the ditch-digging and other tough jobs that must be done to enable boom-time buildings to go up. But immigrants, mostly Mexicans, do want it, and so in the Rockies, far from the border and that much-discussed wall, Spanish is taking over. Mr. Brokaw visits a four-bedroom house where one of Mr. Gould’s workers lives with 17 other people. Only one of the 18 is an American, a 2-year-old who was born in the United States.
Mr. Gould talks forthrightly about the frustrations of having more work than he can find workers to do. His staff is shown making what seems to be a good-faith effort to check applicants’ papers, and the police and other local officials talk about legal-vs.-illegal-immigrant issues, but there’s a sense that it’s all a facade: everyone knows the area’s economy wouldn’t run without illegal workers. Certainly Mr. Brokaw’s crew has no trouble not only pinpointing which of Mr. Gould’s workers are illegal but also finding the document-forger they use.
But this is no expose. It’s an attempt to look at the immigration issue through the eyes of people directly involved, and Mr. Brokaw – despite an annoying interview technique in which he states the ideas he wants his subjects to articulate, then asks them if that’s correct – gets a commendable amount of candor out of people when he lets them talk.
Varied views are dutifully represented, but this is at heart a pro-immigrant program; immigrants are depicted as hard workers, and there is no suggestion that some come to the United States specifically to commit crimes or rip off the system. If nothing else, though, Mr. Brokaw reveals the interconnectedness that takes hold once a community turns to immigrant labor.

Tom Brokaw forgot how to report (if he ever knew). This is just plain advocacy. NBC–the Nuevo Broadcasting Company.
***
NBC News employees who put together this pro-illegal alien propaganda are:

David Corvo, executive producer; Soraya Gage, producer; Joyce Cordero, Leonor Ayala, field producers; Liz Bowyer, editorial producer; Erika Beck, researcher; Josh Kuvin, editor;

Remember their names. They are behind similar propaganda you see on NBC News, every single day. Here and here are “reports” from two of them on how they “researched” this “report”.