As Director of Governmental Affairs for the Tupelo, Mississippi-based American Family Association, Sandy Rios lives in the Washington D.C. area. But she told AFA head Tim Wildmon today that she is one of the few US citizens in the District. In an interview today with Wildmon on Today’s Issues, Rios said that immigrants are the majority in Washington, or at least in the city’s McDonald’s restaurants.
“In Washington D.C., sometimes when we are in public places it’s hard to find any natural-born Americans, you are the minority,” she told Wildmon. “When I go through McDonald’s or whenever I interact with illegal immigrants -- and like I said, they are legion -- my responsibility is to be kind and gracious.” Rios went on to explain that biblical commands to treat immigrants with compassion should not impact public policy.
In fact, foreign born residents account for 13.5% of the city’s population (compared to 13.0% nationally). Undocumented immigrants make up just 4.5% of the District’s residents.
Wildmon warned that offering undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship would lead to “the end of the Republican Party as we know it,” while Rios called such a move “Republican suicide” and urged GOP leaders to get out of Washington more and live in places like Mississippi.
“I think of that phrase in the Old Testament about a ‘strong delusion,’ she said. “I would say that the Republican leadership is under a strong delusion. I don’t understand it, I can’t explain it except that they just don’t get out enough, they need to go live in Mississippi, they need to go live in Nebraska, wherever, because the sanity seems to leave them.”
