For all of Rudy Giuliani’s many, many, many faults, as Mayor of New York he came as close as any Republican officeholder is ever likely to come to a champion for immigrants’ rights. Even as a presidential candidate, as he flip-flops on abortion and backtracks on immigration, he has so far refused to apologize for New York City’s unofficial status under his mayoralty as a sanctuary city. "I didn't have the luxury of political rhetoric," Giuliani has explained of his administration’s policy to instruct law enforcement officers not to take account of the immigration status of victims and suspects in criminal investigations. "So I said, if you are an illegal immigrant in New York City and a crime is committed against you, I want you to report it."
Congressman Brian Bilbray of Solana Beach would rather you not.
A bill introduced yesterday by Bilbray and a group of neo-Know Nothing lawmakers threatens to penalize sanctuary cities by withholding up to fifty percent of their federal anti-terrorism funding. So if you’re a resident of New York, Washington DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Fresno, Phoenix, Denver, Seattle, Miami, Chicago, Baltimore, Ann Arbor, Detroit, Minneapolis, Madison, Reno, Newark, Virginia Beach, Albuquerque, Durham, Columbus, Tulsa, Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Salt Lake City or any of dozens of other cities, you can thank Mr. Bilbray for trying to make you even more vulnerable to an Al Qaeda attack. Thanks, Brian!
Let’s re-cap what would seem to be a critical detail of the event Mr. Bilbray purports to want to prevent from happening again by intimidating undocumented workers from reporting crimes against them: 9/11.
Q. How many of the 19 hijackers on September 11, 2001 were in the U.S. illegally?
A. Zero.
So what exactly does pushing undocumented immigrants further into the shadows accomplish for protecting our nation from terrorist attacks? Same answer as above.
We’ve all grown used to Republicans clubbing voters over the head with 9/11 to push through their anti-immigrant agenda, not to mention their anti-worker, pro-rich and pro-war agendas. Bilbray would like to take the logic a step further, by denying American cities the resources to find and catch terrorist plotters until they get on board the anti-immigrant bandwagon.
The once-might "National Security Party" of the GOP hasn’t just lost its edge; it’s headed straight over the cliff.