Most Anti-Hispanic House of Representatives Ever?

Last year it was conventional wisdom that the existential threat posed by the fleeing of Hispanics from the Republican Party would produce moderation on immigration reform and other matters in this Congress. What is remarkable is that the exact opposite has happened. Consider what the House has done or is proposing to do in this Congress:

•  Denied legalization and a path to citizenship to 12m undocumented immigrants, despite overwhelming public, Republican Party and right of center constituency support for Comprehensive Immigration Reform. This will be the second time in the past decade that a GOP House refused to take up a bi-partisan Senate immigration reform bill.

•  Passed dozens of bills designed to strip health insurance from millions and even perhaps tens of millions of Hispanics through repeal of the ACA. No group in America is going to be benefit more from the ACA more than the Hispanic community.

•  Paul Ryan’s budget framework guarantees dramatic cuts in public school spending, schools Hispanics rely on for their pursuit of the American Dream.

•  By passing the “King Amendment” in 2013, the House went on record for stripping legal status and work permits for over 500,000 DACA recipients, and once again making them eligible for immediate deportation. I think this is the first time the Republicans advanced policies that would take existing legal status from a group legally resident and working in the US and advocate their removal from the country.

•  The King Amendment would also revoke an Obama Administration policy that specifies that law-abiding undocumented immigrants were no longer priorities for deportation. The King Amendment would restore the threat of imminent deportation to every undocumented immigrant in the country.

•  Block efforts to increase the minimum wage, something which would be particularly beneficial to the Hispanic immigrant community.

•  End existing legal protections for Central American minors (and only Central American minors) apprehended at the border, denying them internationally negotiated and sanctioned opportunities to apply for asylum and other waivers which would allow them to remain in the US. These rights would remain for European and Asian children, for example.

•  Deny funds requested by the Administration for swifter adjudication of the unaccompanied minors at the border, humane detention facilities for the kids here, and a humane repatriation process that would ensure the kids were not sent to violent and potentially lethal circumstances.

These are just the things I came up with this morning. Am sure there are more.

Taken together, it is hard to imagine an agenda more hostile to the interests of Hispanics in the US than what the House GOP has done this Congress. Rather than embracing this critical emerging part of our fast changing country, the House Republicans seem to be doubling down on a politics incredibly hostile to their presence here.

The question is why? What is the motivation here? I offered some thoughts in a major magazine piece on this subject two years ago, but it is a question well worth asking in the months ahead.

And be sure to read my recent MSNBC op-ed,  "On Immigration, the House GOP has only one answer: Deport the Kids."