GOP Rep. King Compares Latinos to Drunks

Posted on Jul 17, 2006

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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