Those US Senators from Texas keep flipping and flopping on immigration. First it was Cornyn. Now it’s Hutchison.
Texas Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison provides a stunning example of a politician who talks out of both sides of their mouth. In December, she voted against the DREAM Act, after previously voting for that same bill. That’s bad enough. Last week, in San Antonio, she told a group of business people that actually she supports the DREAM Act. What?
America’s Voice recently dubbed Hutchison’s Senate colleague, John Cornyn, the biggest hypocrite on immigration reform. Like Hutchison, he calims to be for it, but votes against it. She’s giving him a run for the hypocrite award.
This is might be just a cynical political game for Cornyn and Hutchison. But, it’s real life for thousands of young students whose lives are in legal limbo, in part, because of those two.
More at Politics and Chocolate:
Flavia at DREAM Activist took on Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) today for comments she made to a group of Texas business leaders on the DREAM Act.
Via MySanAntonio.com:
“To me, it is a clear-cut issue that we should not deport young people who have been educated in our school, who many times have a college education, who we encourage to go to college,” Hutchison said.
On its surface, the comment is worth cheering, but the hypocrisy is rich here: vote against DREAM after it passed out of the House, when a couple of votes could have tipped the balance in the Senate, and then support it when you’re running out the door. Sounds like leadership to me!
Also, Hutchison says she is still supposedly concerned with the citizenship provisions of DREAM:
Hutchison, R-Texas, told the San Antonio group that she could not support legislation that includes “amnesty” provisions of citizenship, which was included in the DREAM Act. Instead, she said, she wants a bill that would protect foreign-born students and those who serve in the military from being deported — but would not want them to receive automatic citizenship here.
Does this mean DREAMers will get that “special” kind of citizen card where they don’t get to vote? I’ve always thought it was super American to have different kind of citizens for different occasions.
But really, the DREAM Act — especially in its most recent, even more stringent incarnation — is anything but “automatic citizenship.” One would have to graduate high school against the odds, stay out of trouble, serve honorably in the U.S. military or successfully complete two years of college, and pay some pretty hefty application fees (which end up making DREAM a revenue generator, by the way).
It’s clear that Kay and her colleagues either 1) did not read the bill or 2) are grasping for excuses now that they’re concerned about their legacy.
