Representative Steve King (R-Aryan) wants to end birthright citizenship because he's worried about the demographics of our country.
Egad! You mean we won't be all white and blue-eyed and stuff?
At a House hearing yesterday on his proposal to challenge the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship requirement, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, alleged that the provision’s defenders simply want to “expand [their] political base by any means necessary” and worried about what preserving birthright citizenship will do to the country’s “demographics.”
King’s bill, which he has introduced a number of times in the House, seeks to end birthright citizenship by statute, since he and his allies claim — despite overwhelming historical evidence — that the 14th Amendment was not meant to apply to the children of immigrants. He calls it part of his strategy to fight the “anchor baby agenda.”
Oh, that's couched in such pretty concern trolling terms, isn't it? But as one commentator at The Hill noted, what King wants is American apartheid.
People, unlike answers in a poll, live multidimensional lives. Yes, they worry about their jobs, economic opportunity, the quality of schools; but Latinos in particular filter the world through a prism that has immigration front and center. Why? It is a threshold matter — it's about respect.
So every time King and his allies sally forth with yet another attempt to deport the Dreamers, or in this case, to withdraw the constitutionally guaranteed citizenship right of a select group of Americans, they crash into a bigger reality.
Respect is a term Republicans do not understand, nor do they care.
