Joe Straus and the House Moderates Could've Stopped the 'Show Me Your Papers' Bill
Many believed it wouldn’t happen, but on Thursday, the Texas House passed legislation that in spirit and letter is awfully similar to SB 1070, the “show me your papers” law that properly branded Arizona an anti-Latino pariah. As Chris Hooks noted, the bill shatters a rough consensus that had held for at least a decade in Texas: Big business, moderate Republicans, immigration advocates and Democrats used to work together to fend off any legislative assaults on immigrants and even managed to pass forward-thinking laws like the Texas Dream Act, which guarantees in-state tuition for undocumented Texas high school graduates. There was also the small matter, for savvy GOP strategists, at least, that the Republican Party likely wouldn’t be able to hold on to power if it pissed off too many Hispanics. The status quo was hardly immigrant-friendly — some construction sites are charnel houses, for one — but in terms of preserving the social and political peace, it worked well enough.
The center did not hold. The final vote Thursday on Senate Bill 4 was 94-53, with every single Republican voting “yes” and every single Democrat voting “no.” And for those looking for whom to blame, for my money, there is no better place to start than Speaker Joe Straus and the so-called moderates in the Texas House.
If SB 4 were to be stopped, it wasn’t going to be the governor. (Greg Abbott made “sanctuary cities” an actual legislative emergency, and, oh, did he mention again today that his wife is Hispanic?) It wasn’t going to be the Senate. (There are no moderates left in Dan Patrick’s hostage chamber.) It wasn’t going to be the Freedom Caucus in the House. (They’ve been itching to repeal the Dream Act and attack “sanctuary cities” for at least four sessions.) The Democrats are universally, vehemently against SB 4 and spent much of the last 24 hours making personal, emotional and often tearful pleas to the Republican majority not to pass SB 4, or at least to tone it down.
Who does that leave? It leaves supposed moderates like Jason Villalba, the chummy Dallas rep who takes pride in being a punching bag for both left and right. Villalba was one of only two Republicans to vote for an amendment that would’ve prohibited police from interrogating children about their immigration status. He also voted against an amendment from tea partier Matt Schaefer that aligned the House version with the Senate version by allowing police to question people about their status during detentions, such as traffic stops, and not just arrests. Yet, in the end, he voted in lock-step with his party and on Twitter attempted to blame the whole thing on the Democrats.
Read more: https://www.texasobserver.org/joe-straus-house-moderates-couldve-stopped-show-papers-bill/
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Last edited Sun Apr 30, 2017, 02:34 PM - Edit history (1)
the non-voters of Texas FINALLY decide that they are sick and tired of the nastiness and the bigotry. Non-voters need to learn that not voting is NOT a successful strategy of resistance. Unfortunately, I am coming to the conclusion that our outreach just hasn't reached these people and that the only way the non-voting Latinos of Texas are EVER going to wise up is if enough of them are swept up in Trump's and Session's immigration raids and find themselves languishing in immigrant jails despite the fact that they are native-born American citizens.
