House Democrats have
one question for the senators who pushed the immigration reform bill:
Why didn’t you tell us
Mexicans could be so conservative?
Six Democrats from the
House Judiciary Committee returned Friday from a fact-finding trip to to the
US-Mexico border. Their goal was to gather evidence in support of the Border
Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act, which was
passed by a wide margin in the Senate. The bill is now in the House where
members of the Judiciary Committee will decide if they want to push it forward.
An important part of the bill would provide a path to citizenship for the
country’s estimated 11 million illegal immigrants.
After five days with
Mexican immigrants, the six representatives determined they are “traditional
and religious, sort of like American conservatives,” according to a statement
by the group.
“They’re really into
crosses and prayers and stuff,” said Rep. Annie Kuster, a first-term
congresswoman from New Hampshire. “They’re like a darker-skinned mirror image
of the Republican base.”
Kuster wonders how her
progressive and atheist constituents would react knowing she voted to give a
path to citizenship to 11 million pope-worshipping-anti-choice-misogynist
Catholics.
“A lot of the fellas
down wore emblems of the Virgin Mary,” Kuster said. “When we crossed the border
into Mexico, we even saw little shrines right in the middle of public space,
which in New Hampshire is just absurd. Our driver made the sign of the cross
and kissed his fingers each time we passed a church.” “It freaked me out,” she
said.
To get a better sense
of the challenges immigrants face, representatives stayed as guests in
immigrants’ homes. It was during these times, the representatives say, that
they made the most shocking discoveries, such as that Mexicans have orthodox
views regarding the murder of animals.
Very few Mexican
immigrants are vegetarian, the lawmakers say, and many even keep chickens that
they kill whenever they feel like eating flesh. Some of them also have pigs and
goats — also to be capriciously slaughtered.
Perhaps most
troubling, the lawmakers said, are gender roles in these immigrant communities.
“The men can be really chauvinistic,” Kuster said. “They were always asking
their wives to prepare food for us. I wanted to say to these ladies, ‘oye
hermana, it’s 2013. You are free to leave this kitchen. I don’t see any
chains.’ But they were so brainwashed, some of them even looked content.”
“The worst were the telenovelas,” Kuster said.
“You know, Mexican soap operas. Every night we’d watch these women, slaves to
their emotions, fall in love with strong men who break the women’s hearts
before riding away on a horse. How do you say ‘sexist’ in Spanish?”
“And the music in the
bars,” she said, referring to the norteño style, popular in the region of
Sonora. “It’s like country music, but worse. You see guys in cowboy hats, using
homophobic slurs to insult their friends, drinking beer and swaggering. It’s
truly a throwback to Texas of the 1920s or something. They have nothing in
common with us.”
It didn’t take long
for the representatives to understand that many of the illegal immigrants they
had wanted to help could very well end up becoming conservative Republicans.
“This immigration bill
is dead,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a 20-year House veteran who drove the group
of legislators from Washington D.C. to the border in his Cadillac Escalade.
“Perhaps in a few years we’ll talk about a more selective amnesty program, like
for those who come from big cities, and maybe studied literature or law, and
who like listening to Mexico’s version of NPR.”
While Kuster won’t
support the immigration bill in its current form, she says she might change her
mind if it can be modified to include a plan to bring the cultural values of
illegal immigrants up the year 2013.
“We send racists to
sensitivity training, so maybe we could institute a similar program for
immigrants,” she said. “They could be granted points toward citizenship if they
went through a program to modernize themselves. Their reward could be
low-interest loans for electric cars.”
The lawmakers feel
their constituents back home will understand the abrupt change in legislative
direction — once the word gets out that many illegal immigrants are potential
members of the GOP.
“I hadn’t really
thought about [immigrants’ beliefs],” said Brenda Washburn, a kindergarten
teacher from Virginia. “I’m very pro-immigration, and I think it’s rotten how
we let them languish in legal purgatory for so long. But we don’t really want
to give citizenship to people who end up being flag-waving wingnuts, do we?”
HOOT! I saw this coming first!
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