Statue of Liberty - New York Harbor - Ellis Island [Dreamstime.com]

Steven King running around Washington like a chicken whose head's been cut, looking for the biggest microphone he can find to say,  “For everyone who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds — and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert,” King said later in the interview. “Those people would be legalized with the same act.” When he went on NBC Meet the Press today with David Gregory, he was given a chance to take that remark back or express some regret for saying it. Instead he asked David Gregory for a bigger shovel he can use to dig a deeper grave for his Tea Party, by reiterating the same comment.

This past June, the Senate passed the first comprehensive immigration reform since President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) into law in 1986. The bill, S-744, was the work of a bipartisan group of 8 Senators and it passed the Senate by a vote of 68 to 32, with Vice President Joe Biden presiding over the passage of the bill, in a rare appearance as President of the Senate. Fourteen Senate Republicans joined the Democrats to pass the bill.   

The pull to the right that Tea Party Republicans have been tugging onto the country is evident in the Senate’s bill. For example, similar to the watered-down gun-uncontrolled background check the Senate passed this year, and which died in the House, this Senate Immigration Reform bill allows for insufficient legal immigration, and it is riddled with a labyrinth of complex and likely unachievable and unworkable benchmarks. The misguided objectives include, but are not limited to: 20,000 more border patrol guards, 350 miles of additional fencing along the Southern border, increased surveillance equipment, and a new electronic system to monitor people entering the U.S. via airports and seaports, at a cost of $46 billion over ten years. The bill is now in the House where many observers expect it will die, or come out in pieces that neither the Senate nor President Obama could agree to adopt. 

Tea Party Republicans in the House are in an upward against the bill.  Emboldened by their success at defeating the McCain Immigration Bill, which was supported by President Bush in 2007, the Tea Party has gone on a crusade to defeat the Senate Immigration Reform bill. 154 so-called conservatives (depending on how one defines the word conservative) have launched a coalition to defeat immigration reform with the support of the 450 conservative radio and TV talk show hosts around the country plus Fox News.

The Tea Party’s strategy to defeat immigration appears to be based on a combination of self-interest, an unabashed disdain for immigrants, and an incurable delusion that any policy that is not aimed at bringing this country back to the 19th Century is evil, bad, unconstitutional, or all of the above. This Tea Party line of thoughts and strategy are also mixed with a heavy dose of unmitigated irrationality. For instance, On Mr. exiled-from-Fox New, Obama-hates-white-people, Glen Beck, House Representative under-ethics-investigation and my husband-runs-a-cure-the-gays program, Michele Bachman said,

This is the true story of the Tea Party’s opposition to this bill; it is not their smokescreen about “path to citizenship.” Otherwise, why reform immigration if the immigrants have no way of becoming citizens in order to enjoy the full benefit of the Bill of Rights and the promise of right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? As passed, the Senate bill will require those who apply for legalization to wait 13 years before they could apply for citizenship. The bill is already extremely punitive.

The Tea Party has also made claims that a path to citizenship rewards people who have broken immigration laws to come here, and insists on an elusive set of “enforceable triggers” to monitor and confirm that the new borders, or shall we say, the additional border security measures are working to keep new people from entering the country illegally. These are false arguments that are simply meant to create roadblock and defeat the bill. First, people who are in the country illegally have lived in fear and suffer hardship due to their lack of proper documentation. A path to citizenship is not a reward, but a relief. Beginning in the 1920, under both Democratic and Republican presidents, Congress passed multiple immigration relief and adjustment bills.

Second, the border security argument is filled with holds and would only hold any water, only if one were to believe that the estimated 11 million immigrants that would be covered under this bill are all from Mexico. This also goes for the Tea Party’s airport, seas, and land security surveillance trigger system. The reality is that millions of the individuals that would be covered under a new immigration reform law have entered the country legally or overstayed their legal documentation, which is typically a work permit, a student visa, or tourist visa.

Clearly, the Tea Party’s arguments for its opposition to reform have less to do with real concerns for the country or the people that would benefit from this legislation, including citizen children of undocumented parents, and more to do with a regressive ideology. Part of the problem here is that the Tea Party is a leaderless group of people who have led on nothing,  have no articulated plan for advancing the lives of workers, women, students, children and families, and lack any idea for improving the economic or re-building the infrastructure in this country. This crowd’s policy for the poor is to stop eating; their policy for the uninsured is to die quickly. For students, their agenda is to stop going to college because education will turn you into a progressive thinker; who would want to have thinkers around? As for self-deportation or mass deportation, this concept does not even deserve to have the word viable attached to it. This is simply not an option. It is the last one idea that the Tea Party was able to dig out of the small figment that remains of the party’s collective brain.

Some in that party, if this toxic mismatched group of people can be called such, have called those undocumented immigrants all sorts of names. But that is the Modus Operando of that party, and does not deserve to be addressed. What must be addressed, however, is their insidious assertions drawn out of fake studies that somehow immigrants are lesser people who are by genealogy intellectually inferior, and criminal minded. Not only is this type of discussion uncivil and offensive, it is not based on any empirical or scientific evidence. But who cares about science, facts, or evidence? Certainly not anyone in the Tea Party, but if there is someone in that party, who actually does, let him or her speak the truth and stand up for something now.

Overall, the case for immigration reform is overwhelmingly stronger than the intellectually dishonest, nationalist, and inhuman argument that the Tea Party has put forth. The Tea Party came to the table empty-handed, thus they have resorted to doing all that they can to spoil the meal. Most immigrants are hard-working and law-abiding people. They came to this country from all over the world. Some may have overstayed their visas and others may have crossed the borders illegally, but in general, almost all of them came to America in search of a better life for themselves and their family. In addition, the Congressional Budget Office released a report indicating that legalization will boost the economy by broadening the tax-base with millions of new tax-paying workers being added to the Internal Revenue Service’s spreadsheet. Furthermore, under President Obama, immigration enforcement has increased dramatically with raids of employment places and detention and deportation of millions of people. Thousands of miles of the Southern borders have been fenced in and guarded by thousands of border security personnel and troops with constant surveillance cameras.

The number came out in the 2012 presidential election. Mitt Romney lost Black Americans’ votes by a ridiculous 90%, Hispanics by over 60%, and Asians by over 40%. The Republicans cannot sustain this obstructionist posture. Obstructionism is not a policy. It was defeated last November and it will continue to be defeated, leaving the Republican Party to wander into the political wilderness for the next ten election cycles. Perhaps, this is a lesson they need to learn. That chapter is called political rock-bottom. The party can take its time to learn those lessons, in the meantime, Speaker Boehner must muscle some sort of character strength to lead his House caucus or work with House Democrats in order to do what is right for the country, and that is to pass a comprehensive non-punitive Immigration Reform bill. In the process, he might just succeed in getting the Tea Party’s grip off the self-destruct button.