A coalition of Tea Party and other right-wing activists sent a letter to the Senate yesterday calling the Gang of Eight’s bipartisan immigration reform plan “unsalvageable” and urging senators to scrap it altogether. While the media has focused on better-known signers of the letter – including right-wing talkers Erick Erickson, Michele Malkin and Laura Ingraham – many of the letter’s signers were all too familiar to us here at RWW.
Here are eight other pieces of advice on immigration reform from signers of the Tea Party letter.
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“No one is immune to the illegal who drives wildly drunk, or the wanna-be gang-banger who needs to machete innocent citizens to gain entry and respect into the Latino or other gangs. We have uncovered the fact that Americans are under assault, a fact under-reported by the press, and unconnected by our elected leaders at all levels of government…. Insist that our elected officials remember that ‘We, the People,’ not the illegal aliens, are their constituents. And that the racism perpetrated by illegal invaders upon Americans of all ethnic backgrounds is real.”
-- Maria Espinoza, director of a project linked to the nativist Numbers USA intended “to honor and remember Americans who have been killed by illegal aliens” -
“Native-born Hispanic Americans, who make up most Hispanic voters, have a majority of the children that are born to them are illegitimate, very high rates of welfare use. So this is a description of an overwhelmingly Democratic voter group. Not all of them, obviously, because there’s a big group and there’s a lot of differences among them. But generally speaking, Hispanic voters are Democrats, and so the idea of importing more of them as a solution to the Republican Party’s problems is kind of silly.”
-- Center for Immigration Studies executive director Mark Krikorian on why Republicans shouldn’t bother appealing to Latino voters -
“Having this amnesty is suicide for the Republican Party because they’re going to vote Democratic, and that’s why the Democrats are pushing it. And the reason is because they come from a country where there’s no tradition or expectation of limited government…. They think government should be there to give orders and solve their problems and give them a handout when they need it.”
-- Phyllis Schlafly, who has also expressed nostalgia for the days of “Irish, Italian, Jewish” immigration -
“If this country becomes 30 per cent Hispanic we will no longer be America."
-- Vision America's Rick Scarborough, who also contends that AIDS is divine punishment for homosexuality -
“This British Conservative Party has watered down traditional conservatism to such an extent that some conservatives have formed an alternative, the English Defense League (EDL), which has spawned the British Freedom Party. This group has been strongly attacked in the media, here and abroad, as “far-right” or worse. But I had the opportunity to meet their leaders, Kevin Carroll and Tommy Robinson, at the 9/11 conference in New York City sponsored by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer which was designed in part to organize resistance to global Islam and safeguard our right of free speech against the advance of Sharia, or Islamic law. … Carroll and Robinson want a patriotic alternative to the British Conservative Party that will promote traditional values.”
-- Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid, recommending that the Republican Party emulate the English Defense League, a violent, radical nativist group -
“And sadly, what we’re seeing in many of these populations – and I don’t mean to pick on the Somalis, they just happen to be worth picking on – is that they are in fact sort of ghettos in places like Minnesota, where they contributed substantially to the election of the first Muslim Brother – oh, excuse me, first Muslim – to the United States Congress. Keith Ellison from Minnesota. But the concern that I have is that this group is not simply establishing itself and over time becoming a force to reckon with politically in this country. It’s also incubating two things: jihadists…and the other thing is they’re incubating Sharia.”
-- Anti-Muslim activist Frank Gaffney, birther and the originator of Michele Bachmann’s smears against Muslim civil servants -
“Is this one of those backdoor opportunities to allow people in the next five months to get the opportunity to vote? Will we see Janet Napolitano and the president come out with a new edict that says since we allow these people to be here legally, we’re now going to allow them to vote? How far down the rabbit whole will it go?”
-- Former congressman Allen West -
"I know the solution. Take a plane load of them and dump them in Somalia. Make no secret of it and tell the illegals, every time we catch them, that is where they are going. 99% of them will head back to the border on their own."
-- Judson Phillips, prominent birther and head of Tea Party Nation
Other signers of the letter include Gary Bauer, who has warned that gay rights and pro-choice policies will lead to “God taking his hand of protection off of our country”; Elaine Donnelly, one of most hyperbolic opponents of repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell; Ken Eldred, a top financier of the Seven Mountains Dominionism movement; Brigette Gabriel, who warns that elementary school classrooms are becoming “recruiting ground[s] for Islam”; David Horowitz, who thinks that conservative activist Grover Norquist is a secret Muslim who has “infiltrated” the Republican Party; and the American Family Association's Sandy Rios who said last month of President Obama, “I don’t think he loves the country like people who were born and did grow up here.”
