Anti-Immigrant Fury Continues in Pahrump

Pahrump is becoming quite the media whore. Back in November I posted this and today the fast-growing community about 60 miles west of Las Vegas has made the New York Times again.

This all began when Michael Miraglia proposed an ordinance declaring English the official language of Pahrump, and also denied unspecified town benefits to “undocumented foreign nationals.” The ordinance also included the ridiculously xenophobic regulation against the flying of any foreign flag without an accompanying American flag.

Mr. Miraglia said that the English Language and Patriot Reaffirmation Ordinance, as he called it, was intended to bring the community together under a common language and custom. But its adoption on Nov. 14, by a vote of 3 to 2, has had the opposite effect.

“It has stirred up anger toward the immigrants,” said Arturo A. Reyes, 40, who came to the United States from El Salvador two decades ago and became a citizen. Mr. Reyes, who owns El Cancún Mexican Restaurant on Highway 160, also known as Main Street, added, “The whole thing is just bad; it’s just stupid.”

I love the irony of an immigrant from El Salvador correctly telling Americans who were born and raised here what is stupid. It's obsessively stupid.

Some Hispanic residents have said that since Mr. Miraglia’s proposals were introduced, people in passing cars have yelled racial slurs at them.

Lee Rowland, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, said students had been harassed by school officials for speaking Spanish in private conversations.

And eggs have been thrown at the home of Robert and Liese Tamburrino, a white couple who protested the ordinance by flying Italian and Polish flags, representing the heritage of Mr. Tamburrino’s parents. They also received a hate letter calling them “thimble-brained, knuckle-dragging cretins.”

The level of hateful intolerance is mind-boggling. One man who owns two Mexican restaurants in Pahrump believes the motivation for the ordinance was "cut-and-dried racism." One of his restaurants had anti-Mexican slurs painted on it after closing on May 1 for the “Day Without An Immigrant” protests.

One of the regular commenters here is the author of a blog called Coyote Angry and happens to live in Pahrump. You can find more "ranting at assmonkeys from the Mojave desert" over there.

Hopefully, for the sake of our future as a nation, this nitwit fanaticism will die down soon before the "assmonkeys" do irreparable damage to America's reputation... or worse. This is not a healthy society.