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Ear to the Ground

GOP Rep. King Compares Latinos to Drunks

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Posted on Jul 17, 2006
Steve King
From C-span.org

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa)

The anti-immigration congressman made a speech before Congress in May that blasted the idea of providing interpreters for Spanish speakers at polling stations, saying the practice would “coddle” Hispanics, “just like an enabler for an alcoholic, hand them a bottle of booze so they do not cure themselves….”

  • This is the same guy who recently proposed erecting an electrified fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, and compared Latinos to livestock.

  • AMERICAblog:

    ... That means then that you can go into a voting booth and vote in any voting booth in America on an English language ballot, not another language ballot. And the only other scenario by which one might be sitting in the United States and eligible to vote and not have command of the English language would be if they were born here in the United States, they had birthright citizenship, which I reject that idea, but it is our practice today, someone with birthright citizenship, and by the time they get to be 18 and register to vote, they go into the voting booth and they had not had enough exposure to English to be able to understand a simple ballot, and so we would give someone who was born in America, an American citizen, lived in an ethnic enclave, never learned English, and give them that interpreter in the voting booth so we can find a way to coddle them and be an enabler, just like an enabler for an alcoholic, hand them a bottle of booze so they do not cure themselves….

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    By Immigration Reform, July 17, 2006 at 7:46 pm Link to this comment
    (Unregistered commenter)

    I’ll bet anyone who has LexisNexis access could easily find dozens of examples of fine, upstanding liberals providing similar examples of “enabling” behavior, none of which were intended to nor where interpreted as comparing those “enabled” to drunks.

    This - like most things with the same source - is like kids listening to a speech by Al Gore and the kids only concentrating on the soup stain on his tie.

    There are certainly ethnic enclaves in the U.S. where it isn’t necessary to learn English or even be part of the wider society. And, one of the motivations of politicians who encourage such enclaves could be because the ethnic media is easier to control, and thus those in the enclave are not exposed to a wide source of information on various candidates.

    Please don’t turn this site into a MediaMatters/Atrios/AmericaBlog level tabloid.

    Report this

    By harald hardrada, July 17, 2006 at 2:00 pm Link to this comment
    (Unregistered commenter)

    now that northern ireland’s calmed down, pete king has had to look elsewhere to spill his bile, so he’s decided to represent frightened white folks—he looks tense because he, like his constituents, is shitting in his drawers, knowing that his days in power are coming to an end

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