Today, the House voted 236-191 against executive action as well as DACA, reinforcing their own image as the party that wants immigrants to get out. The thing is, it wasn’t that long ago that Congressional Republicans were reaching across the aisle to help pass the Senate immigration bill, and even less time ago that the House GOP leadership released their statement of principles on immigration reform. So what happened? How did we get from reform legislation and statements of principle, to today’s hateful vote? That’s what Rep. Luis Gutierrez is wondering too. During a floor speech this morning, he highlighted one of the House GOP principles from last year — “One of the greatest founding principles of our country was that children would not be punished for the mistakes of their parents” — and wonders what happened to that sentiment. View his comments below, or watch the video of his speech:
What happened? What happened to that principle — you just gave it up? Doesn’t mean anything to you anymore? Don’t care about children? You think children should be held responsible for the actions of their parents. Because that is precisely what you are saying today.
Because 600,000 young people came forward and did exactly this. And YOU said, “It is time to provide an opportunity for legal residence and citizenship who were brought to this country as children.” What happened? I want one of you to deny that this isn’t one of the principles that you took into your conference last year. It is what you took. What happened one year later?…
Where are you going to move the country forward to? Let me just tell you about one number. It’s 270, that’s the Electoral College. That’s the number it takes to elect the President of the United States. You’re out of reach there.
