Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, a prominent endorser of Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign, warned last month that if the next president allows any sort of path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants living in the United States, “the republic will be lost” because new citizens won’t understand the “responsibility to be properly educated before you vote” and thus will “vote for whoever will give them the most welfare.”
Gohmert made the comments in a March 31 interview with Baltimore talk radio hosts Sean Casey and Frank Luber.
Casey asked Gohmert about a Center for Immigration Studies report that he said showed that the “immigrant population in the United States is now at 61 million” (in fact, the CIS number alsoincluded the American-born children of immigrants) and whether that means that Texas could go the way of California and turn “into a blue state.”
Gohmert agreed, saying that while Republican Gov. Pete Wilson is often blamed for turning California Latino voters off from the GOP by pushing a draconian anti-immigrant ballot measure, the state’s political shift was actually the result of Ronald Reagan being “tricked into signing an amnesty bill and all the sudden you had 2 to 4 million Democratic voters.”
“So if we get a president that decides to do any kind of amnesty, then the republic will be lost,” he said. “Because you cannot give people the rights without them being educated to the responsibilities. If they come into this country and they don’t understand there’s a responsibility to be properly educated before you vote, then they’re going to vote for whoever will give them the most welfare, and we’re on our way to bankruptcy already, that will help push us over the edge.”
