Are House Republican leaders sure that they want to drag immigration reform out?
It’s only the first week of August recess, and while immigration reform advocates have been making news across the country holding rallies, attending town hall events, and delivering thousands of petitions, opponents of reform have been going on the record saying even nuttier things than usual. It’s not good news for a Republican Party that knows it desperately needs to attract more Latino, minority, and moderate voters. But this is what they’re inviting, by stalling legislative action in the House and refusing to acknowledge that they need to pass immigration reform with a path to citizenship.
What are we talking about? Here’s the news from opponents of immigration, and what they’ve been saying just in the last few days:
- Rep. Steve King, recently in the headlines for arguing that most DREAMers are actually drug smugglers with “calves the size of cantaloupes,” once again refused to apologize for his comments. Speaking to a local Iowa TV station this week, he actually said that “if I insulted anybody, it could only have been drug smugglers.”
- Steven Krieser, the third-highest ranking member in Wisconsin’s Department of Transportation and a Scott Walker appointee, was fired yesterday after he said that when he looks at immigrants, he “see[s] Satan.”
- Cathie Adams, the former chairman of the Texas GOP, picked up this apocalyptic theme when she said that a provision in the Senate immigration bill will lead to the End Times. As she said: “That is going to be the brand either on our foreheads or on the back of our hands. That is demonic through and through. That is End Times prophecy. There is no question about that.”
- Reps. Ted Yoho (R-FL) and Buck McKeon (R-CA) both tried to argue that immigrants coming over the borders are actually terrorists in disguise. As Yoho claimed: “I talked to a guy that works with Hezbollah, they call him the 007 of Hezbollah, they call him and find out he’s brought over 1,500 people here illegally that don’t like us, they want to blow us up.”
- Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has been spreading the idea that if immigration reform passes, taxes will skyrocket, the economy will collapse, and America’s future will be destroyed. As she warned: “If you think taxes are high now, get ready! This impacts you. This means you don’t have a job. This means you don’t have benefit packages. This means you don’t have a future and a hope.”
It’s impressive, the breadth of crazy, nasty and just plain wrong things that opponents of immigration reform will say and claim. It’s noteworthy that these comments are not from random man-on-the-street Tea Partiers, but rank-and-file current and former Republican officials. And that’s why Republicans are in big trouble without immigration reform. The longer they draw the legislative process out, the more comments like the above examples will bubble up–a “daily reminder that Republicans hate” Latinos, as Markos Moulitsas put it this week. Even if Republicans kill immigration reform this year, the issue will come up again and again, giving Steve King and his cohorts ever more chances to alienate a key voting block–until the GOP gives in and passes it.
Or Republicans could make it easy on themselves, and just give us a vote on immigration reform and citizenship as soon as they get back from August recess.
