According to congressman Steve King (R-IA) we should delay immigration reform because the person or persons who bombed the Boston marathon yesterday may be immigrants.
“Some of the speculation that has come out is that yes, it was a foreign national and, speculating here, that it was potentially a person on a student visa,” King says. “If that’s the case, then we need to take a look at the big picture.”
On immigration, King says national security should be the focus now, and any talk about a path to legalization should be put on hold. “We need to be ever vigilant,” he says. “We need to go far deeper into our border crossings. . . .We need to take a look at the visa-waiver program and wonder what we’re doing. If we can’t background check people that are coming from Saudi Arabia, how do we think we are going to background check the 11 to 20 million people that are here from who knows where.”
The Right is suddenly very concerned about background checks. If your skin is brown.
Meanwhile, Laura Ingraham echoed King’s sentiments and went a step further.
From Media Matters
LAURA INGRAHAM: This, in my mind, raises all sorts of questions. I mean, again, we don’t know who did this, motivations, all of that. But it is interesting that at this moment — we are considering legalizing or giving regularized status to millions of people. Pretty much none of them have gone through any rigorous background checks, to have a temporary status in the United States. And we don’t — I just think that there are all sorts of security implications aside from the other arguments on immigration — national security implications that we don’t talk about with enough frankness and I think certitude here. We can’t stop every attack, but my goodness, if we had borders that were shut down and we actually had a proper screening process, maybe we could stop some of them.
“If we actually had a proper screening process, maybe we could stop some of them.”
That sounds familiar.
If we had a proper screening process, we may be able limit the number of gun deaths we see each year. But the Right doesn’t believe in rigorous background checks and a “proper screening process” unless you have brown skin. Because if we implement a proper screening process for white people, that’s just a slippery slope to FEMA camps and Red Dawn.
The racial component of these contradictory positions is inescapable.