Federal Immigration Bill Will Push Repugs Over the Edge for Good

Back in February, I endorsed the piece-of-shit Senate health care DEform bill on the grounds that passing it would make repug heads explode. As, of course, it did. One of the fascinating aspects of that battle was that the more foaming-at-the-mouth insane repug objections became, the stronger the bill's support grew in Congress and the public.

Repug obstructionism rallied the GOP's shrinking base, but horrified and disgusted everyone else.

Now it looks like the inhumanly draconian and racist Arizona "Papers, please" legislation has pushed the repugs right to the edge of electoral irrelevance. A federal immigration bill could push them over, to crash and burn on the rocks far below.

Here's the latest ludicrous outrage, as Think Progress explains:

[Thursday], Arizona lawmakers made a handful of changes to the immigration bill Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) recently signed into effect that appear to be in response to many of the criticisms aimed at the bill. One of those changes replaces the phrase "lawful contact" with "lawful stop, detention or arrest" to "apparently clarify that officers don't need to question a victim or witness about their legal status." However, the legislature also implemented a third change that some call "frightening." As part of the amended bill, a police officer responding to city ordinance violations would also be required to determine the immigration status of an individual they have reasonable suspicion of being an undocumented immigrant.

Wonk Room recently obtained an email written by Kris Kobach, a lawyer at the Immigration Reform Law Institute -- the group which credits itself with writing the bill -- to Arizona state Sen. Russell Pierce (R), urging him to include language that will allow police to use city ordinance violations such as "cars on blocks in the yard" as an excuse to "initiate queries" in light of the "lawful contact" deletion.

Ezra Klein gave the short version: "[Q]uite explicitly, Kobach is editing the bill to make it easier for police to dream up legal pretexts to hassle brown people about their citizenship."

Earlier this week, a repug member of Congress drove the crazy train right off the rails. Steve Benen:

Just a few weeks ago, the political fight over immigration policy was barely a blip on the national radar. Now we have a House Republican lawmaker, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), calling for the government to deport U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants.

"Would you support deportation of natural-born American citizens that are the children of illegal aliens," Hunter was asked. "I would have to, yes," Hunter said. "... We simply cannot afford what we're doing right now," he said. "... It takes more than just walking across the border to become an American citizen. It's what's in our souls. ..."

Hunter made his comments at a "tea party" rally in the San Diego County city of Ramona over the weekend.

Let's be real clear about this. The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says that those "born ... in the United States" are "citizens of the United States." It also says that no state can "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

For that matter, the Supreme Court ruled in 1898 that a baby born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrants was legally a U.S. citizen, even though federal law at the time denied citizenship to people from China. The court said birth in the United States constituted "a sufficient and complete right to citizenship."
What this Republican congressman is saying, then, is that he supports a policy wherein the U.S. government deports U.S. citizens based on their parents' immigration status.

Even for the GOP, this is pretty nutty. Indeed, if American officials were planning to deport American citizens, where would the children be expected to go?

Yesterday, tens of thousands of people all over the country rallied to protest Arizona's "All Brown People Are Guilty" law. That's probably more people in one day than all the teabagger assemblies put together.

Blue Texan sums it up:

The bottom line is that some Republicans realize this is nativist crap that will screw them at the polls, since brown people are going to be in the majority very soon. They also know their biggest donors profit handsomely from all that cheap labor.

Others, even though they might be aware of those realities on some level, just can’t help themselves and simply love the idea of brown people getting picked up by cops for being brown.

This could be just what the doctor ordered for November. The Democrats should force the issue and drive the wedge in further. The Teabaggers don’t do “immigration reform.” They want their country back!

I think if Harry Reid and President Obama want to, they can pass both immigration reform and cap-and-trade before November.

However, I am going to advocate passing immigration reform first only because of the electoral victory it will bring Democrats in November. Climate change is far more of a genuine emergency for not just the nation but the planet, but passing it won't destroy the republican party. Immigration reform will.