House Republicans Held An Immigration Hearing. That Was Their First Mistake.
House Republicans Held An Immigration Hearing. That Was Their First Mistake.
AOC, Jamie Raskin, Robert Garcia showed up IN FORCE.
On Wednesday, Republicans on the House Oversight Committee tried to have a hearing on immigration policy. They called their hearing, “The Biden Administration’s Regulatory and Policymaking Efforts to Undermine US Immigration Law.”
Unfortunately for them (I suppose), their beliefs about our immigration situation and what is going on at the border are based mostly on vibes, so Democrats on the Oversight Committee pretty unkindly insisted on pointing out actual facts.
In one instance, ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) helpfully pointed out that despite GOP narratives, chief Border Patrol agents have testified that the border is more secure now … because they have funding.
Raskin and other Democrats on the Committee repeatedly and correctly hammered home the fact that Republicans have repeatedly voted against properly funding the border because they’re mad that Joe Biden is president, while Republicans tried to argue that funding wasn’t worth anything because Joe Biden is President.
Indeed, Rep. Jared Moskowitz even brought out a visual aid featuring a quote from Texas Congressman Troy Nehls saying exactly that.
“Let me tell you, I'm not willing to do too damn much right now to help a Democrat and to help Joe Biden’s approval rating,” Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) told CNN earlier this month. “I will not help the Democrats try to improve this man’s dismal approval ratings. I'm not going to do it. Why would I?”
Now, sure, funding border agents and immigration judges isn’t quite as sexy as alligator moats or a bunch of agents standing on the border shooting people’s legs out, which Rep. Robert Garcia (D-California) reminded the committee were some of Trump’s ideas …
… but it is more effective and less overtly psychotic.
Of course, that’s according to me, a person with a well-known left-wing bias against alligator moats and shooting people in the legs. So Rep. Garcia actually asked a fella named David Bier of the Cato Institute what he thought of these ideas. Biel, a guy who literally works for one of the most famous right-wing think tanks in the country, agreed that an alligator moat was inhumane and not a good idea. He also affirmed that ordering soldiers to shoot migrants in the legs to stop them from coming to the US would not only be a bad idea, but that it would be attempted murder.
Rather than going along with the narrative that we need to keep immigrants out, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) pointed out that doing so is actually hurting us — and that we owe much of our nation’s economic success to more liberal immigration policies. Also the fact that practically everyone in the chamber and everyone in the country, other than indigenous people, Black people or those who are from Puerto Rico or Guam or another US territory are here because of immigration. And specifically, many of us are here because of the more liberal immigration policies of up until 1925 that allowed pretty much anyone (except the Chinese, because racism) to come here and work and build a life for themselves.
I would also point out that Americans were horrible to these other immigrant groups as well, which suggests that at least some of the people in AOC’s mentions whining that they’re fine with legal immigration may be entirely full of shit.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez also pointed out that job openings are at a record high, that we need people to fill them, and that many right-wing states have even moved to bring back child labor in order to do so.
A RECENT WONKETTE POST ON THIS VERY TOPIC!
To be clear, most child labor victims in the United States are immigrant children — frequently unaccompanied minors or those who had been separated from their families at the border. But Republicans in states like Florida, Wisconsin, and Indiana are sick and tired of seeing these child immigrants take jobs from our American middle-schoolers and want to loosen up the child labor laws so that they, too, can be exploited by the capitalist machine. You know, instead of allowing more adults into the country.
Seems like not a great solution!
But speaking of family separation — it is only fair to point out that the Republicans had their, uh, moments during this hearing as well.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna had the courage to come out and openly say that she thinks family separation is great and that we should do more of it. She suggested that the children were only separated from those she referred to as their “quote, unquote parents” until our government could prove that they were actually the biological parents of the children and were not trafficking them.
Now, this actually used to be the case — people who came over here as families really only were separated when something like child trafficking was suspected. The difference, however, is that the Trump administration instituted a zero tolerance policy that required all families to be separated when parents were caught being here illegally. Many of these families were separated for years, causing untold amounts of trauma to the children, which is something that someone who was actually concerned about child welfare would be concerned about. And as of October, a thousand of the parents — who were deported without their children — have still never been found.
But while we’re here and talking about trafficking, please to enjoy this clip of Rep. Shontel Brown (D-Ohio) discussing with David Bier the fact that, despite the right-wing hysteria, it’s actually American citizens who are bringing fentanyl into the country — because it’s obviously way easier for them to get through security and the drug traffickers know that.
With the increasing awareness that abortion is not going to be a winning issue for them this coming November, Republicans are leaning as hard as they possibly can into stoking fears about immigration amongst the kind of people who pay a billionaire immigrant $8 a month so that they can be the first to tell AOC that she hates America. It’s best we be prepared for that.
PREVIOUSLY:
I was going to reply to the poster that called the people coming to our southern border "refugees" but I can't find the comment now.
This is a PSA for folks. Asylum seekers are not refugees. A refugee in the official sense of it is categorized that way by the UN, they have a caseworker, a resettlement plan, a group trying to find a place for them to live. I'm not saying they have it good - a quick glance around the world will disabuse anyone of that notion - but they have *a status*.
An asylum seeker does not. They are here to flee something, assuming they pass the rather stringent credible fear/threat test we have, they are probably fleeing something horrible, and have seen some shit.
But they have no UN status, just the good graces of a country like ours, and its people. We need to do better.
"I'm not willing to do too damn much right now to help a Democrat and to help Joe Biden’s approval rating,” —Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX)
In other words, *nothing* that makes *anything* better for people. (A fundamental Republican principle.)