Too many Florida Republicans can’t resist anti-immigrant demagoguery | Column - Tampa Bay Times

tetekrefil.blogspot.com

You don’t need a crystal ball to foresee the resurgence of anti-immigrant bigotry in Donald Trump’s GOP. It is as certain as death and taxes. All that is needed is a trigger, like the immigration related executive orders issued by Joe Biden this week. But the more likely catalyst will be the immigration reform bill the Biden administration has vowed to send to Congress later this year.

Mac Stipanovich was chief of staff to former Gov. Bob Martinez and a long-time Republican strategist and lobbyist. He has since registered as no party affiliation and as a Democrat, and his voter registration now varies with the election cycle. [ Mac Stipanovich ]

This legislation reportedly would enhance security on the southern border while regularizing the legal status of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants now in the country and providing them with a path to eventual citizenship. The proposed bill probably will be as comprehensive, complicated and controversial as Senate Bill 744 — co-sponsored by Sen. Marco Rubio before he went full MAGA — which passed the U.S. Senate easily in 2013 with a bipartisan vote of 68-32 before being stoned by right-wing zealots in the House of Representatives who would not even discuss it, much less vote on it.

Unlike in 2013, when some positive, forward looking policies still glimmered in the gathering darkness that would envelop the GOP three years later, the weltanschauung of the party today is full-on fear of the future. And the beating heart of that fear is white fright, among the most obvious manifestations of which are animus toward immigrants of color, legal as well as illegal, and a determination to manipulate the mechanics of the electoral system so to avoid being bested by Black and brown Democrat voters at the polls.

So you can safely bet the farm that preventing millions of undocumented brown immigrants presumed to be disproportionately Democratic in their political inclinations from becoming citizens and being able to vote is a hill on which MAGA Republicans will figuratively fight and die to the last man and woman.

Virulent anti-immigrant rhetoric was the mainstay of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and he unsuccessfully tried to exploit the issue again in the 2018 midterm elections, hyping immigrant invasions and sending regular army units to camp out on the border until after Election Day. In the 2020 election cycle, Chicken Little warnings about imminent socialism and unchecked civil unrest took precedence in Republican campaign messaging, but anti-immigrant animus was merely dormant, not dead.

In fact, it is stirring now. Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, perhaps the most shameless toady in Trump’s amply stocked stable of Congressional sycophants (the competition for that dubious honor is fierce), is prominent among those already dusting off the divisive rhetoric on immigration issues. And there is a cadre of in-state Republicans skilled in the arts of performative politics and especially practiced in anti-immigrant pandering who are always ready to join the fray.

For example, Joe Gruters, chairman of the Republican Party of Florida and a state senator, sponsored legislation in 2019 that banned sanctuary cities with great fanfare, even though Florida had no sanctuary cities. And he scheduled a follow-on statewide “listening tour” on immigration issues, but this red meat road show for the MAGA faithful had to be canceled for propriety’s sake when a man in Texas who drank too deeply from the well of anti-immigrant hatred slaughtered 23 people in an El Paso Walmart.

State Rep. Randy Fine, another headline hunting Republican provocateur, has introduced a bill in the upcoming legislative session that would repeal a 2014 law passed by the Republican dominated legislature and signed into law by then Gov. Rick Scott that allows undocumented immigrants brought into the country as children, known as Dreamers, to pay in-state tuition at Florida public universities and colleges. The Dreamers must reside in the state, graduate from a high school in the state after three consecutive years of attendance, and apply to a state university or college within two years of high school graduation, which are much more rigorous requirements than those applicable to citizens. Oh, and Dreamers are not eligible for any financial aid, unlike citizens.

So rather than righting some egregious wrong, the Fine bill is nothing more than political posturing at the potential expense of innocent, powerless young people trying to get an education. But, as is the case with so much of the MAGA anti-immigration agenda, the cruelty, not the policy, is the point.

Anti-immigrant bigotry is just too effective a political club for some Republicans to leave unbloodied for long. It will return sooner than later to pride of place in the MAGA rhetoric of fear, joining socialism hysteria and law and order hyperbole in a dismal trinity of demagoguery.

Mac Stipanovich was chief of staff to former Florida Gov. Bob Martinez and a longtime Republican strategist who is currently registered No Party Affiliation.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

"many" - Google News
February 04, 2021 at 07:15PM
https://ift.tt/36FpQ5w

Too many Florida Republicans can’t resist anti-immigrant demagoguery | Column - Tampa Bay Times
"many" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2OYUfnl
https://ift.tt/3f9EULr