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Rhetoric Against Immigrants Heats Up On Right

Posted March 1, 2010 by Patrick Young, Esq.

The beginning of the national campaign for immigration reform, however faltering, has begun to draw strong anti-immigrant rhetoric from the Right.

In November, ALIPAC, the organizers of the poorly attended anti-immigrant tea parties, were already calling supporters of immigration reform “the treason faction.” The tea parties themselves were the scenes of two violent incidents, including one between rival anti-immigrant factions.
Youth For Western Civilization, the self-styled “Rightwing Youth Movement”, sees a culture war in play in the struggle for humane immigration laws: “every year, liberal elites classify American citizens more and more as second-class citizens in their own country, while fighting for the “rights” of people who have no legitimate claim to be here in the first place.”

Bob Kellar, a California politician, made national headlines when he told a tea party audience that he was a “proud racist” in his opposition to undocumented immigration.
Former Congressman Tom Tancredo has called for a halt to legal immigration. He claims that preventing U.S. citizens from bringing their spouses to the United States will revive job growth.

The supposed tea party victory in the Mass. senate race in January has also lead to a spread of anti-immigrant rhetoric from the extremist groups and tea party nation towards Republican insurgents. For example, Edward Lynch, a Republican congressional candidate in Florida, told last month’s CPAC convention that illegal immigration is “killing our schools, it’s killing our economy, it’s killing our health care.” This new “blame the Latinos” approach contradicts party efforts to appeal more towards the growing Hispanic electorate.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and an important figure on the Right for three decades, says that he has heard conservatives claim that Latinos are lazy and weaken western culture, according to CQ Politics. He says that he not only disagrees, but that Latino votes could be turned towards the GOP. “But you can’t talk to someone from the immigrant community, threaten to deport their relative and then ask them to vote with you because you’re pro-life,” he said. “Some conservatives and some Republicans have used harsh and insulting rhetoric that has chased away Hispanic voters unnecessarily.”

Tags : immigration reform, politics

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