After a “Watters World” segment about Las Vegas on last night’s O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly hosted producer Jesse Watters in the studio for some follow up Q & A. As Watters discussed the high unemployment and lack of good jobs there, he suggested that most jobs created were menial jobs being done by “illegal immigrants.” Yet Watters gave no indication he had any actual knowledge about anyone’s immigration status and every indication that he had merely made an ethnically-based assumption. Or, as the dictionary might say, displayed his prejudice.

Noting that there’s a lot of commerce in Las Vegas but that there’s also higher unemployment than elsewhere, O’Reilly asked, “So who’s not working?”

Watters explained that while the big developers are hiring, the jobs are mostly menial and low-paying.  Watters said, “You’re getting a lot of illegal immigrants. We saw a lot of illegal immigrants on the street, passing out strip club cards, people doing menial labor, those kind of things.”

Wait a minute! How did Watters know they were “illegal?” Did he stop and ask for papers? Interview them? Somehow, I doubt that.

Even worse, O’Reilly didn’t question what was almost certainly an assumption based on ethnic profiling.

It looks as though a menial worker who happens to be Hispanic is synonymous with “illegal immigrant” to Watters – and O’Reilly.