Congressional leaders, including Paul Ryan and Nancy Pelosi, are meeting today to discuss something American voters already overwhelmingly agree on: that DACA recipients should stay here, in the only country they’ve ever known as home. Brand new polling shows that 73 percent of American voters—including 68 percent of Trump voters—want a bill with permanent protections for immigrant youth, and they want it now. And as one conservative columnist wrote this week, enough Congressional support exists that Ryan and Mitch McConnell “could put a DACA fix on the floors of their respective houses and pass it today.”
Instead, Virginia Congressman Bob Goodlatte, as chair of the House Judiciary Committee, is prepared to block bipartisan legislation like the DREAM Act to make room for more unnecessary border security and racist legislation like “the Criminal Alien Gang Member Removal Act, aimed at MS-13 and other immigrant gangs,” according to the New York Times. This bill scapegoating undocumented immigrant youth has already won the favor of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group with ties to Holocaust deniers and white supremacists:
Mr. Goodlatte said this week that he would hold no DACA hearings until border security legislation is drafted.
“We are happy to have discussions with anybody who wants to talk about what we need to do with DACA, but I would say DACA is at the end of that list, not at the beginning,” said Mr. Goodlatte in an interview. “We can’t fix the DACA problem without fixing all of the issues that led to the underlying problem of illegal immigration in the first place.
Any expert will tell you that for the past few years the border has been more secure than ever, something Donald Trump has gladly taken credit for despite the fact this has largely been the result of his predecessors and an improving Mexican economy. Yet Republicans are still pushing for that fucking wall that Mexico will never pay for and more border militarization that further terrorizes families in the region. And just this week the House approved by unanimous consent a resolution condemning white nationalists. But as Rewire’s Tina Vasquez notes, when it comes to immigration, “Republicans in Congress are getting their marching orders directly” from that ilk.
Here’s more on CIS, the anti-immigrant hate group that has publicly supported the “criminal gang member” legislation Goodlatte is touting:
[CIS was] founded by John Tanton, a white nationalist supporter of eugenics who is considered the father of the modern anti-immigrant movement and who once infamously warned of a Latino “onslaught.”
CIS has publicly pushed for the RAISE Act, and its executive director, Mark Krikorian, has been a vocal proponent of E-Verify, relying on misinformation to push for a mandatory, nationwide rollout of the system. This falls in line with the group’s practice of manipulating numbers and using questionable sources “to advance their anti-immigrant agenda,” according to the Center for Immigration Integrity. “CIS has not been coy in citing virulent racist authors, white nationalists, and anti-Semites.
This was apparent at a House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security hearing in April that focused on a debunked CIS report by the organization’s director of research, Steven Camatora. Despite promoting a widely denounced report by Heritage Foundation researchers, Camatora is routinely called on as an immigration expert.
One of that report’s authors, Jason Richwine, argued in his dissertation that genetic differences in intelligence and aptitude exist between whites, Asians, and other races. Camarota referred to the Heritage report as the “most detailed and exhaustive ever done on this topic.” Camarota also had bylines at Tanton’s Social Contract Press, a white nationalist journal that published the English translation of the “stunningly racist” novel The Camp of Saints—the book former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon cites in interviews explaining his views on immigrants.
Goodlatte—whose top donors include “Comcast, Facebook, the National Association of Broadcasters and Google parent company Alphabet, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics”—wouldn’t commit to any pro-immigrant youth legislation when interviewed by his hometown paper, not even weaker legislation that would grant undocumented immigrant youth only temporary status. This is supposedly Paul Ryan’s House, and he claims he supports immigrant youth, yet he’s ceding his power to Bob Goodlatte and hate groups. Yes, the House has a speaker, but it’s not Ryan who’s leading. Keep up the pressure. Tell your member of Congress that immigrant youth are here to stay. Pass a clean DREAM Act now.