Gone is the Jeb Bush who once said that undocumented immigrants come to the U.S. out of an “act of love” for their families.
Instead, he’s been replaced by a Trumpified caricature who, earlier this week, followed in the footsteps of the Donald’s anti-immigrant extremism (call it the “Trump Effect”) and called the U.S. citizen children of undocumented immigrants, “anchor babies”:
“If there’s abuse, if people are bringing — pregnant women are coming in to have babies simply because they can do it, then there ought to be greater enforcement,” Bush said on Bill Bennett’s conservative radio show, “Morning in America” Wednesday. “That’s [the] legitimate side of this. Better enforcement so that you don’t have these, you know, ‘anchor babies’, as they’re described, coming into the country.”
At a town hall later later that week, Bush — who once dared to say he understands the immigrant experience because he’s supposedly lived it — actually defended the use of the derogatory term, saying:
Bush said Thursday that he doesn’t believe the term “anchor babies” is offensive and blamed Democrats for perpetuating the idea that it’s a loaded term.
In one of his most aggressive exchanges with reporters to date, Bush dismissed suggestions that the two-word term deemed offensive by many Hispanics and denounced by Democrats is improper.
“Do you have a better term? You give me a better term and I’ll use it,” he snapped at a reporter who asked him.
Of course, who better to decide whether or not “anchor baby” is offensive to the Latino and immigrant communities than a white Republican man busy sucking up to the former host of “Celebrity Apprentice”?
And, Jeb, about what other terms you can use for so-called “anchor babies”? How about American citizens, because, according to the United States Constitution, that’s exactly what we are.
Let me know if that works for you.
