That was intense.
During the otherwise innocuous and entertaining reading of bills on the Local and Consent Calendar – where the idea is to plow through as many bills as rapidly as you can – Rep. Yvonne Gonzalez Toureilles slowed the proceedings when she came to the podium sobbing.
She was regretfully withdrawing House Bill 1997 after the Legislative Council refuse to remove what she called a hateful word – but they didn’t, so a good bill died.
Seriously, that bullshit term needs to go, stowed in the attic with odious likes of the N-word.
UPDATE: The bill was moved to the regular calendar, where the author amended it to read “undocumented person.” After all the tension over the use of “illegal alien,” exemplified by Rep. Paul Moreno‘s emotional speech about it earlier this week, it’s mind-boggling the term stayed in the original bill.
UPDATE 2: Let’s not forget that xenophobic Republican Rep. Leo Berman lit this powderkeg earlier this week, when he gave a personal privilege speech denouncing those “illegal aliens.” Capitol Annex has the lowlights:
Berman also waxed nostalgic about the olden days of immigration in America.
“In the early part of the century when my parents came through Ellis Island, they were given a physical examination. If anything wasn’t right, they were put on the boat and sent back. Note I say ‘immigrant,’ because they are the people who … assimilate into our culture and pay their taxes and eventually raise their hands and become citizens.”
Berman then proceeded to claim that illegal immigrants were bringing polio, the plague, leprosy, tuberculosis, malaria, Chagas disease, and Dengue fever to the United States in alarming numbers.
The leprosy claim has been making the rounds of late, as it’s one of Lou Dobbs‘ embittered, paranoid favorites – one he’s standing by despite it being completely discredited. And where did Dobbs – and by extension, Berman – get it? According to blogger David Neiwert, it’s popularized by racist, discredited “scientist” Madeleine Cosman, who also empirically claimed “most” Latino immigrant men “molest girls under 12, although some specialize in boys, and some in nuns.”
Lovely bunch you’re running with, Leo.
This article appears in May 11 • 2007.