03/05/2023
Earlier: Don’t Trust Hispanic Congressmen On Immigration, No Matter How “Republican” They Claim To Be
Rep. Tony Gonzales (TX-23) has just been censured (57-5 with one abstention) by the Texas Republicans for, among other things, his squishiness on immigration [Texas GOP votes to censure Rep. Tony Gonzales over votes on same-sex marriage, guns and border security, Fox News, March 4, 2023]. This is a welcome sign that that the GOP base may be realizing that the minority outreach touted by the GOP Establishment/ Consultant Class, besides not working very well, may come at the price of selling out the Historic American Nation, and above all whites. Gonzales, and another Hispanic renegade Republican, Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (FL-23), have dedicated their energy to ensuring the House does nothing positive on immigration. Whether it’s impeaching Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas or cracking down on illegal immigration, Gonzales and Salazar have been there to block it. Of course their efforts have netted them praise from the leftist Regime Media. But that just shows they’re not good for the GOP/GAP — or America.
Both Gonzales and Salazar are second-term congressmen. They both represent majority Hispanic districts. Gonzales’ Texas-23 covers most of the West Texas border and is 68 percent Hispanic. Salazar’s Florida-27 covers parts of Miami and is almost 69 percent Hispanic. Gonzales served in the Navy prior to being elected to Congress. Salazar was a Telemundo host prior to running for office in 2020. Gonzales represents Tejanos (long-settled South Texas Hispanics, some the descendants of refugees from the bloody 1910-1920 Mexican Revolution) and Salazar represents Cubans, both of which are the most likely Hispanic groups to vote Republican.
Gonzales and Salazar grabbed headlines lately by trying to stymie the two most serious and important House Republican efforts on immigration: impeaching Mayorkas and passing Texas Rep. Chip Roy’s bill to stop phony asylum seekers. Gonzales has led the fight against both. Impeachment, he says, is an emergency measure, and he worries that his colleagues are abusing that power. He does not mention his friendly meetings with Mayorkas, which Gonzales claims are more productive than attacking the unindicted visa fixer:
Many House Republicans are trying to impeach the Homeland Security secretary. Tony Gonzales had a productive breakfast with Alejandro Mayorkas instead.
The swing-seat Texan met with the Department of Homeland Security chief last month to discuss a Border Patrol station in his district’s tiny border town of Cotulla. Operations in Cotulla got shut down six months ago due to staffing shortages after 53 migrants were found dead in a tractor-trailer in nearby San Antonio due to a reckless smuggling attempt, but the Biden Cabinet official ultimately agreed to reopen the station by the end of his meeting with Gonzales.
“A very popular guy in the Republican Party, right?” Gonzales quipped of Mayorkas during an interview in his Washington office. Despite the “risk in all this” outreach to a figure contentious among Republicans, he added, what matters is the “tangible result.”
[He’s a Texas border-district Republican. And he says the right’s new immigration bill is a ‘bad idea,’ by Sarah Ferris and Olivia Beavers, Politico, February 2, 2023]
For her part, Salazar criticizes Mayorkas… for not doing enough to help Cuban asylum seekers. She sent two letters to the DHS secretary in December urging him to do more. Salazar wrote to say she opposed the Biden Regime’s plans to ramp up deportations of Cubans. Plainly, Salazar’s first loyalty lies with her own people.
What gets Gonzales and Salazar even more worked up is Roy’s bill to shut out dubious asylum seekers. The bill empowers DHS to turn away illegals who claim asylum but cannot be detained. It also allows for the immediate deportation of illegals if the U.S. government does not have “operational control” of the border.
"This bill is a simple bill: Either detain or turn away"
"It would stop the flow [of migrants across the border], take away power from the cartels, and actually empower the Border Patrol to stop the got-aways and the fentanyl that’s flowing into the country, and killing us." https://t.co/5QpwCd5Z7l
— Rep. Chip Roy Press Office (@RepChipRoy) January 27, 2023
The two Hispanics recoiled in horror.
It’s “un-American,” Gonzales insisted:
We can’t allow the Republican Party to be hijacked. Trying to ban legitimate asylum claims — one, it’s not Christian, and two, to me, it’s very anti-American.
He also accused Republicans of not doing anything “serious” on immigration because they see the crisis as politically advantageous. And he criticized Republicans for holding a committee hearing on the invasion near the border.
This partisan hearing was organized in secret and undercuts any meaningful bipartisan conversations. I urge the Chairwoman and Republican Leadership to stop using South Texas for political theater and engage in meaningful conversations on how to adequately address the fentanyl crisis, fix our immigration system and deliver actual results. Do it for the constituents that elected us.
[Border Republican accuses GOP colleagues of using crisis to their own advantage, by Anna Giaritelli, Washington Examiner, February 16, 2023]
Gonzales frequently claims his constituents want the border strengthened and more immigration:
I am talking to folks who live on the border every single day. And they’ll tell you — and it could be people with the most conservative philosophies you can imagine — that go, “Tony, I want to keep every terrorist out.” And they’ll say, “You know, this wouldn’t be so bad if people came here and they could work and help my small business out.”
[Tony Gonzales steps up to the plate on immigration and border security, by Rafael Bernal, The Hill, February 9, 2023]
Salazar dubiously, and amusingly, claims Roy’s bill will hurt American brain power. “Are we stupid? Come on. This country was based on good minds. Look at Albert Einstein, we gave him a piece of paper to come in,” she said in January. “We are letting the Albert Einstein of this modern time slip away” [Early rift over immigration exposes House GOP’s tough path to consensus, by Marianna Sotomayor and Theodoric Meyer, Washington Post, January 23, 2023].
Well, you don’t need to be Einstein to know that the number of Einsteins who jumped the southwest border during the past two years is zero.
This defense of liberal immigration policies earned both House members praise from MSM. A report from the Associated Press depicted Salazar and Gonzales as scrappy underdogs against the aggressive bigotry of their party colleagues [Latino Republicans Push Back on Party’s Immigration Agenda, by Adriana Gomez Licon, February 28, 2023].
But these stances are also attracting a backlash from within the GOP. Hence Gonzales’ censure from the Texas GOP. He has dismissed the censure as a minor annoyance, even though it may further aid a potential primary challenge against himself. Gonzales must feel it’s more important to please the press than his base [U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales defiant as he faces censure for breaking with Republican Party, by Patrick Svitek, Texas Tribune, March 2, 2023].
Gonzales and Salazar do differ on Amnesty. Gonzales voted against two Amnesties in the last Congress. One would have legalized illegal aliens who came to the U.S. as minors (otherwise known as DREAMers), while the other would have legalized illegal-alien farm workers [Tony Gonzales steps up to the plate on immigration and border security, by Rafael Bernal, The Hill, February 9, 2023].
Yet Gonzales doesn’t necessarily oppose Amnesty on principle. He frequently talks about constituents who say they want illegals to work for them legally. He also said his party must support “immigration reform” — leftist code for Amnesty — in an interview last year.
“[Immigration reform] is a topic that is in my face nonstop, and it’s just the right thing to do,” he told Newsweek’s Alex J. Rouhandeh:
This country has been just going back and forth for too long, and the problem is that it’s a political winner for both parties, to be able to throw it around, but the loser is the American public. …
It’s been difficult to find people that even want to have the conversation. It seems like everyone is in their corners, but I’ll keep pushing. Ultimately, this is about national security.
[Rep. Tony Gonzales Urges Congress to Pass Immigration Reform: ‘It’s the Right Thing to Do,’ January 11, 2022]
Memo to Gonzales: Your colleague Chip Roy has proposed a reform that’s “about national security.” You oppose it.
Salazar voted for both Amnesties that Gonzales voted against. Indeed, the Floridian is arguably the most avid immigration enthusiast in the GOP. She proposed her own Amnesty last year that would’ve granted a “pathway to citizenship“ to nearly all illegal aliens. In December, she unveiled a plan that would significantly increase legal immigration by permitting immigrants to import their relatives and corporations to import more cheap labor. “This policy will help Miami and the United States maximize our entrepreneurial spirit and continue leading in job creation, innovation, research, and economic growth,” she said [Salazar Proposes Legal Immigration Plan, Salazar.House.gov, December 16, 2022].
In January, she flew to Davos to tell the globalist World Economic Forum that illegal aliens are “owed” Amnesty.
We need to also give dignity to those people who are in the country and those are the people that I represent. We’re talking about 13 to 15 million people — who are, most of them, Hispanics, I would say 85 percent who speak my language, look like me, and sound like me — who are contributing to the economy of this country and they live in the shadows.
[Republican Maria Salazar Lectures Americans in Davos: Illegal Aliens Are Owed Amnesty, by John Binder, Breitbart, January 17, 2023]
In fact, Salazar is a white Conquistador-American. But, like other Conquistador-Americans, e.g., Jorge Ramos of Univision, she puts building up a Spanish-speaking faction above American interests.
The plain fact is Gonzales and Salazar care more about their ethnic interests than the national interest. They even still trot out the discredited Treason-Lobby talking point that the GOP must move left on immigration to win elections. In fact, they want immigration increased to make America look and speak more like themselves.
Minority Republicans can be fine if they stick to America First principles. But when they betray those principles to advocate for the Great Replacement, they’re no better than Democrats.
Washington Watcher II is an anonymous DC insider.
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