Doubtless this sounds like eminently sound advice to many people of the republican persuasion. Checking their teeth and bone structure, musculature and so on, all part of a modern immigration plan.

Alex Seitz-Wald at Salon.com has more:

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, compared immigrants to dogs at a town hall meeting yesterday, telling constituents that the U.S. should pick only the best immigrants the way one chooses the “pick of the litter.”

King told the crowd in Pocahontas, Iowa, that he’s owned lots of bird dogs over the years and advised, “You want a good bird dog? You want one that’s going to be aggressive? Pick the one that’s the friskiest … not the one that’s over there sleeping in the corner.”

King suggested lazy immigrants should be avoided as well. “You get the pick of the litter and you got yourself a pretty good bird dog. Well, we’ve got the pick of every donor civilization on the planet,” King said. “We’ve got the vigor from the planet to come to America.” The liberal research group American Bridge captured the comments:

Full transcript by American Bridge below the fold.

Transcript: King: ...You put out a beacon like the Statue of Liberty and who comes here? The most vigorous from every country that has donated legal immigrants to America. The cream of the crop. We've always had bird dogs around our place in our family there's a black lab and white lab a yellow lab, and my brother has a chocolate lab. Well you go in and you look at a litter of pups, and you watch them. You watch how they play -- they run around a little bit -- and what do you want? You want a good bird dog, and you want one that's gonna be aggressive? Pick the one that's the friskiest, the one that's in games the most -- not the one that's over there sleeping in the corner. You want a pet to sit on the couch, pick the one that's sleeping in the corner. That's -- so, you get the pick of the litter, you got yourself a pretty good bird dog. We got the pick of every donor civilization on the planet because it's hard to get here, you had to be inspired to come. We got the vigor from the planet to come to America. Whichever generation it was, and then we taught our children that same thing.