Raw Story reported yesterday on Rep. Gohmert’s recent nativist tirade on the House floor. Gohmert tried couching his remarks as concern for the welfare of children, but his barely cohesive speech came off as creepy and bizarre instead.
Some of the stranger comments included suggesting that three-year-olds were being convinced by “someone” that they need to come to the U.S. and that President Obama was complicit in luring children into sex trafficking. Aside from the inappropriateness of suggesting that the POTUS is responsible for sex trafficking, Gohmert’s got a really screwy perception of children.
Who in their right mind thinks a three-year-old is deciding to migrate to another country?
He also lamented the burden of immigrant children who are not working and therefore not paying taxes. Wonder how he feels about the millions of non-immigrant children who aren’t paying taxes. Child labor laws sure are annoying, aren’t they?
He went on to say that Homeland Security provides “three hot meals, a bed to sleep” and “if we can’t find your parents illegally in the United States, then we will find you some other parents.”
Clearly it’s every kid’s dream to be locked in a detention facility where one can get three hot meals, be separated from their parents, or possibly be placed into foster care. That sounds pretty awesome.
This isn’t the first time Gohmert’s said highly controversial things about children. In 2010, Gohmert said,
“I talked to a retired FBI agent who said that one of the things they were looking at were terrorist cells overseas who had figured out how to game our system. And it appeared they would have young women, who became pregnant, would get them into the United States to have a baby… And then they would turn back where they could be raised and coddled as future terrorists.”
These sentiments echo those his colleague Rep. Steve King, who infamously called young immigrants “drug mules” and on other occasions has compared immigrants to dogs.
Gohmert’s recent rant is just further evidence that you don’t have to rub two brain cells together to get elected. The lawmaker is seriously out of step with the rest of the country. Given that some major players within the immigration debate are weighing more humane solutions to immigration, perhaps Gohmert and his ilk are surely desperate to find traction. Or maybe he’s just an insensitive cad.
Jill Garvey is the executive director at the Center for New Community.