Last week we inveighed against fraudulent e-mail blitzes about a university that knuckled under to Muslim pressure to stop teaching the Holocaust. (The pressure was not applied and the Holocaust remains in the curriculum.) This week another scam has come to our attention: a falsehood (as documented on Snopes, the Internet Urban Legends Reference Page at http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/refugees.asp) that immigrants to this country are draining our social security and Medicaid funds to the detriment of natural-born Americans.

In fact, like the anti-United Kingdon e-mail that morphed into attacks against the University of Kentucky, this nonsense began as an anti-Canada broadside and somehow crossed the border. "[S]omeone has merely substituted the word ‘American’ for "Canadian’ throughout the text," according to Snopes. The message was forwarded to us by HIAS, which began life as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and continues to aid immigrants in general, with a request that we publish a rebuttal. Inasmuch as the scam targets editors of Jewish newspapers, and begins, in capital letters, "DEAR EDITOR, YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN INVESTIGATE AND START PUTTING AN END TO THIS RIDICULOUS SITUATION," we are glad to oblige.

The scam e-mail maintains, "Incredibly, the federal government provides a single refugee with a monthly allowance of $1,890. In addition, each immigrant can obtain $580 in social assistance for a total of $2,470 a month. This contrasts to a single American taxpayer who, after contributing to the growth and development of this country for 40-50 years, receives a monthly maximum of $1,012 in old-age pension and Guaranteed Income Supplement. Maybe U.S. citizens who have paid into the social security fund over a lifetime should apply as refugees!"

This "wasn’t even true about Canada," where the e-mail was born and grew into a misguided monster, Snopes reports.

HIAS notes that people it calls "humanitarian immigrants" — "who came to this country to seek shelter from religious, political, or ethnic persecution in their homeland" — are indeed eligible for certain benefits, but the "U.S. government requirements for eligibility in these categories are extremely strict, and non-governmental organizations, like HIAS, work to help these individuals find refuge here within the guidelines set by U.S. law."

The scam e-mail feeds into the ugly anti-immigrant feeling surfacing in much political (and talk-show) discourse, and needs vigorous rebuttal (and deletion from the Web).