Posts on Steve King

While the effort to pass comprehensive immigration reform in the Senate suffered a setback last week, supporters vowed to continue to pursue a compromise this term. Nevertheless, right-wing activists declared victory. Jed Babbin, editor of Human Events, said it was a “Miers Moment” for the Right, referring to the far Right’s successful campaign to undo Bush’s nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. Mark Krikorian praised a “vigilant citizenry” that “inundated” Senate offices, and Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum credited “overwhelming opposition to this amnesty bill.”

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) said, “I think there were people dancing in the streets in cities across America [after the vote]. I hope I can see the tape of some of that someday.”

While the Right Wing claims that the people have spoken, as the New York Times points out, polls find broad public support for the Senate bill’s provisions. For example, about two thirds of Americans support legalization of undocumented immigrants, according to the most recent Washington Post-ABC poll – the very provision opponents decry loudly as amnesty.

The effort to pass comprehensive reform continues, but meanwhile, local politicians and activists are working to undermine it. Like national anti-immigrant figures, Butler County, Ohio Sheriff Richard K. Jones declared that “the 'silent majority' was heard after all by federal legislators.” We heard from Jones last year, as he ramped up his personal campaign against undocumented immigrants in his county – putting up billboards and newspaper ads implying grave consequences for hiring “an illegal,” and making mass arrests of Hispanic workers only to release them without charge.

Like his attempts to “bill” the Department of Homeland Security and Mexico for his police expenses supposedly related to immigrants, Jones’s freelance efforts to treat immigration violations as if they were felonies did not seem to accomplish more than a breakdown of police relations with the Hispanic community.

Now Jones is teaming up with a state legislator to oppose the U.S. Senate bill and try to deport more immigrants:

"Let's create stricter state laws to go after employers who hire persons who are in this state illegally," he said. "Also, let's make English the official language of the state. Those who live in Ohio should know our language. Taxpayers should not have to pay for interpreters in schools, and U.S. citizens living here shouldn't have to learn another language."  …

"If we would make it a crime to be in Ohio illegally and local law enforcement could charge offenders with that as a state criminal offense, then we probably could get the federal government to deport those offenders," Sheriff Jones said. "Now is the time for Ohio to show the rest of the country how to deal with immigration problems."

Lawmakers in other states have sought to make illegal aliens subject to arrest under state and local criminal-trespassing laws since U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Homeland Security agency responsible for deporting illegal aliens, generally does not respond to pick up illegals unless they have committed a crime.

“We are holding a political protest,” said Chris Simcox, head of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, of his group’s vigilante gatherings on the U.S.-Mexico border. Minutes before, he had complained to the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference that the border patrol was not rushing to the scene when he called them from his stakeout. For Simcox, this was evidence of a crisis on the border, a lack of “operation control” that politicians should address “by all means necessary.” On the other hand, it could be that the border patrol agents have day jobs.

Simcox was the star of an immigration panel at CPAC on Saturday, where he called on activists to “take this battle to city councils, state legislatures,” and Congress, and to sidestep what he called the “lamestream media.” He announced that “We the people in Arizona” are circumventing Congress by introducing two more ballot measures this month: one to “abolish all sanctuary laws” and train every law enforcement officer to enforce federal immigration laws, and a second to require employers to prove their employees are not violating immigration laws. Simcox also criticized the immigration positions of the many GOP presidential candidates to speak at the conference, with the exceptions of Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo: “I’ve met many wonderful conservatives [at CPAC]. Unfortunately, none of them are running for president.”

Simcox was joined by Georgia state Sen. Nancy Schaefer, sponsor of what she called the “strongest piece of illegal immigration legislation in the nation.” Her reasons for such concern about immigration ranged from supposedly “spiraling costs” and “overcrowding” of public schools to “sex predators” to the mythical threat of a “North American Union” being secretly formed by the Bush administration to unite the U.S., Canada, and Mexico as one sovereign entity. She has already introduced a resolution in Georgia on that matter.

Like the other panelists, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) encouraged the audience to look for ways that states could take over federal immigration policymaking, although he did not mention his own current effort: King is suing his home state for offering voter information in multiple languages. Instead, King took to task “powerful business interests” he said were behind the “flood” of immigrants, as well as liberals, who he said support immigration because immigrants “will assimilate into the left-wing liberal enclave” of majority-Hispanic congressional districts. These forces conspire, according to King, to produce the “massive price we are paying in the streets of America.” King, at some length, cited his own fictional statistics about “criminal aliens” involved in rape and murder. In order to account for his wildly inflated numbers, King explained that young men will bring most of “society’s pathologies” from their home countries, which have higher murder rates than the U.S.

But King did see hope in the recent immigration raids at Swift meat-processing facilities: “They were Caucasian-Americans lined up for those jobs.”

“The sensible middle ground” to get immigrants to leave. Also: Heritage Foundation op-ed pushes Hutchison guest-worker bill.

The Washington Times reports that the English-only movement is “building momentum,” citing Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa)’s plans to reintroduce his English Language Unity Act in the new Congress and “seven states pushing legislation to make English the official language or to strengthen laws already in place."

“This is the strongest push for official English legislation that I have seen in the last 15 years,” crowed Mauro Mujica, chairman of US English. Rep. King claimed that “There's been such strong support. And it's gaining momentum.” Of course, with Republican immigration hawks out of power, King’s bill may have even less chance of becoming law than last year, when it languished in committee. And while King may use his skills in exaggeration to magnify the “momentum” and to try to create a wedge issue to motivate the anti-immigrant base, the real focus may be on proposed state laws.

"The states have been wonderful on this,” said Jim Boulet Jr., the executive director of English First, a group most recently involved in a failed attempt to prevent Florida Sen. Mel Martinez from being named general chairman of the Republican National Committee. The Washington Times cites efforts by legislators in Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey and Oklahoma, as well as an English-only referendum that passed last year in Arizona. King himself is devoting his energy to the state level by suing the governor of Iowa for supposedly violating the English-only law King crafted as a state legislator.

Jim Gilchrist, founder of the anti-immigrant Minuteman Project, told CNSNews.com that there is a “silent war” consisting of “U.S. residents” that “have been killed in action” by “illegal aliens”:

While the mainstream media is focused on the Iraq war, this ongoing silent war is "taking its toll in lives and domestic tranquility," said Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project.

"Since 9/11 alone, about 45,000 U.S. residents have been killed in action via homicide or manslaughter at the hands of illegal aliens, and about another quarter of a million to 300,000 have been wounded," Gilchrist told Cybercast News Service in an interview.

Gilchrist said he used the terms "killed in action" and "wounded" intentionally "because essentially, we have a war going on here that's not a declared war, that's not a conventional war, but it is costing us 9,000 lives a year."

Where did he those figures? Apparently from Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who has asserted that:

The lives of 12 U.S. citizens would be saved who otherwise die a violent death at the hands of murderous illegal aliens each day. Another 13 Americans would survive who are otherwise killed each day by uninsured drunk driving illegals.

It appears that Gilchrist simply took those numbers together, multiplied by 365 days, and then by 5 years to get his “killed in action” statistics.

But King’s numbers are, as he put it, “extrapolate[d]” from a GAO study he commissioned, which said that that “about 27 percent” of federal inmates in the last few years are noncitizens. As Colorado Media Matters reports in detail, this “extrapolation” is not realistic. Most prisoners in the U.S. are in state, not federal prisons, and most murder cases are prosecuted at the state level. The actual proportion of noncitizens in federal and state prisons combined is a fraction of the number King claims. Using data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Colorado Media Matters reports that “According to the BJS, 6.4 percent of all state and federal inmates at midyear 2005 were ‘noncitizens’ -- not just illegal immigrants -- down from 6.5 percent in 2004, 6.6 percent in 2003, and 6.9 percent in 2002.” Nevertheless, King claimed that “Between the cities, the counties, the state and the federal penitentiaries, that study -- my study shows 28 percent are criminal aliens.”

To summarize, Rep. King took the statistic that “about 27 percent” of federal inmates are noncitizens, added one percent to make 28, applied it to state prisons for no reason, pretended they are all “illegal aliens,” and then “extrapolated” a murder rate (apparently by multiplying 28 percent by the number of murders).

The resulting “statistic,” used by King, Minuteman Gilchrist and others, is simply a fictitious number with no relation to reality. What it is related to is the underlying effort by anti-immigrant activists to equate immigrants with criminality – from activists like Gilchrist to the local civic leaders who pass anti-immigrant ordinances.

While reality-based studies appear to show that immigrants commit less crime and may even make communities safer, anti-immigrant activists can always resort to made-up numbers to make their claim.

Kerry Howley of the libertarian magazine Reason argues that the politics of 9/11 “dumbed down” the immigration debate, allowing virulent opponents of immigration like Rep. Tom Tancredo to take control of the terms of debate:

At the beginning of September 2001, immigration was much in the news. President Bush wanted to legalize more Mexicans who were working in America without documentation, and Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) was loudly opposed. Business leaders said immigrants would bring economic growth; Phyllis Schlafly said they would bring tuberculosis.. Amnesty was a dirty word. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) told The New York Times, "Fences are going to go down between these two countries." Republican conservatives opposed legalization, and President Bush started to hedge.

After the attacks, according to Howley, discussion of comprehensive immigration reform was dropped. Now that the “conversation has returned to immigration from Mexico,” she writes, the “debate is almost the same” except that “the Tom Tancredos of the world now counter with the lexicon of terror.”

Just as Iraqis and Saudis somehow became indistinguishable in the rhetorical aftermath of 9/11, Middle Eastern terrorists who come by air are conflated with Mexicans who come on foot. The skies are calm, but the desert teems with invaders. Immigrants are no longer poor people looking for jobs, or even unapologetic lawbreakers, but living symbols of the holes they slipped through.

We didn't have a plan for immigration reform then, and we don't have one now. The shift is conceptual, captured in language if not in law. When Joe Lieberman told The New York Times that "fences are going to go down between these two countries," he was expressing a mainstream political position. The most illuminating part of this sentiment is not the hope Lieberman expressed but the cliché he chose to express it. Back in 2001, after all, the word fence was just a metaphor.

This last year’s succession of events – from the emergence of the vigilante Minutemen, to the draconian House bill that made status violations into felonies, to the House Republicans’ traveling hearings this summer, to the anti-immigrant ordinances in a handful of small towns – make the summer 2001 debate about Mexican trucks seem quaint. Today, Tancredo and Pat Buchanan continue their talk of the need to preserve white culture against Mexican immigrants, and it’s apparently acceptable for a congressman to bring to the House floor a model of the electrified fence he would use to shock would-be border crossers, and say “we do this with livestock all the time.”