“We can’t allow the Republican Party to be hijacked,” Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, told The Washington Post in January in response to a Republican bill that would further clamp down the border. “Trying to ban legitimate asylum claims — one, it’s not Christian, and two, to me, it’s very anti-American,” Gonzales noted.
The question is whether Gonzales and Salazar will stick to their principles or fold.
Gonzales’ Republican colleague from Florida, Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, has also decried the anti-immigration rhetoric Republicans have used as they champion that bill from Rep. Chip Roy of Texas. In a recent interview with the Associated Press, Salazar said, “We understand that immigrants want to come and live in the promised land.” Referring to her Miami-area district, Salazar said, “Orderly legal immigration is good for the country and good for District 27.”
Roy has called the two members’ concerns about his bill “absurd,” but with Republicans holding such a slim majority in the House, the pushback from these two Latino members is significant. The question is whether Gonzales and Salazar will stick to their principles or fold.
That pressure to fold will clearly come from Roy and other MAGA Republicans who appear to believe Latino Republicans lack real power and are not to be taken seriously. Republicans like to use the elections of representatives such as Gonzales and Salazar to brag about the party’s diversity, but Roy’s insulting dismissal of their concerns suggests that Republicans don’t intend to actually listen to those Latino members. But give Gonzales and Salazar credit for trying to fight back within their own party.
Former Rep. Ileana Ros-Lethien, who represented the district Salazar now serves, left a legacy of being a Latina Republican who tirelessly opposed the anti-immigrant direction of her party. But she is an exception. My guess is that Gonzales and Salazar will eventually fall in line like, say, former Rep….
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