House Bill 1202
Filed: Feb. 9, 2011
Author: Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball
We finally found Debbie Riddle’s limits. There are, indeed, places even she won’t go. We weren’t sure she had any limits. After all, this is the politician who made a spectacle of herself by saying that the concept of free education and medical care “comes from Moscow, from Russia. It comes straight out of the pit of hell.” She also made an uncomfortable appearance on CNN claiming that immigrants come to the U.S. to have anchor babies, little tykes with American citizenship who can be trained to later return and blow us up. This session, she has filed numerous anti-immigrant bills determined to crack down on the laborers and terrorists scheming to destroy our country – but only up to a point: She doesn’t want to take away those maids who keep suburbia humming. This bill would make it a felony to knowingly employ an “unauthorized alien” but with a glaring exception that the Back to Basics PAC ridiculed as the “Laundry Loophole“: You’re off the hook if you hired said alien for “labor or other work to be performed exclusively or primarily at a single-family residence in which the [employer] resides.” So fear not, Texans! Debbie Riddle is keeping us safe from undocumented laborers. Except, of course, when the hedges need trimming.
This article appears in March 11 • 2011.