Congressmen have literally one job: to represent the interests of their constituents.
Rep. Kenny Marchant (R-TX) was asked about the recent immigration bill, and this was his response:
The proposed immigration overhaul “is very unpopular in my district,” said Marchant, who represents suburbs west of Dallas. “The Republican primary voters, they’re being pretty vocal with me on this subject.
So naturally, he’s against it.
He also added the following:
Besides, he said, “if you give the legal right to vote to 10 Hispanics in my district, seven to eight of them are going to vote Democrat.
Rep. Marchant is correct, with a 2011 poll showing that “[t]wo-thirds (67%) of Hispanic registered voters say they identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, while 20% say the same about the Republican Party.”
But according to Annie-Rose Strasser of ThinkProgress, Rep. Marchant “opposes immigration reform because he fears Latino voters”.
An aside comment citing public polling data isn’t fear—the congressman is representing the interests of people in his district. He has to be elected in the Republican primary before facing an election against a Democrat. He admits that Republican primary voters are “vocal” on the subject—that’s who he’s afraid of (and as a congressman up for re-election every two years, consistently should be). His interests are not with undocumented immigrants who wouldn’t vote for him anyway.
Marchant represents Dallas, Texas, where there are estimated to be thousands of undocumented people residing. His district is 24 percent Hispanic. Yet, he was quite straightforward when explaining that these numbers worked against him, and informed his opposition to reform.
No, he did not say that those numbers “informed his opposition to reform”, he said them as an aside about how they literally didn’t affect him.
And by the way, the congressman is not opposed to “reform”, he’s opposed to a bill because people in his district are opposed to it. It’s amazing how subtle changes in the language can help paint the picture of a Congressman as racist or bigoted when they simply disagree with the writer, like Annie-Rose Strasser, on policy differences.
