Immigration becomes key issue in election
EDMOND — As she stood in the driveway of her home Tuesday, a woman named Julie had a question for Democratic congressional candidate Tom Guild: What are your views on family separation?
It was a question that would have baffled any candidate a year — or even a month — ago, but not on this day. Guild called the Trump administration’s policy “a disaster” and “unconscionable.”
As they seek re-election, incumbent Republicans across the country planned to spend the summer and autumn discussing the nation’s low unemployment rate and healthy stock market. Democrats in Oklahoma had planned to focus on improving access to education and health care.
That was before the federal government began placing separating families.
Images from the southern border have grabbed the nation’s attention, giving Democrats challenging incumbent Republicans a political gift. However, many of those Republicans, such as Rep. Steve Russell of Oklahoma City, have issued strong denunciations of Trump’s policy.
“Lady Liberty must continue to raise her arm and keep her torch burning brightly, rather than exchange it for a stiff arm and a middle finger,” Russell said in a speech on the House floor Wednesday night.
“The words inscribed in her base must not say, ‘Send me only your physicians, your scientists and your Nobel laureates.’ If we use our passions, anger and fear to snuff out Liberty’s flame by xenophobic and knee-jerk policies, the enemies of liberty win and what makes America exceptional dies.”
The conservative congressman, a sophomore seeking a third term, does not often speak on the House floor. He quoted extensively from the Founding Fathers and the Bible. He said he was “disturbed at the abandonment of principle” by members of Congress and cited Proverbs: “If a ruler pays attention to lies, all his servants become wicked.”
“In our current national debate, immigrants south of the border carry such worrisome traits as ‘strong in their faith,’ ‘close-knit families,’ ‘hardworking’ and ‘small business entrepreneurs.’ As a conservative, it sounds a lot like the things that I stand for. As an American, it sounds a lot like the America I fought for,” said Russell, a former Army officer.
He twice told the mostly empty House chamber that “we can either import our workers or we can import our food,” as he heaped praise on immigrant farmhands and denounced anti-immigrant rhetoric that has gained popularity with some segments of his political party. He read aloud hateful quotes aimed at Jewish immigrants in 1939 and said he’s heard “the same speech and rhetoric … in recent days in this august chamber.”
“Americans need to sacrifice and wake up. We must not become enemies of the very liberty and the fabric of our republic. The enemies of liberty win if we give up who we are,” he said.
His speech preceded a House vote on an immigration bill Thursday that would have curtailed legal immigration, such as family migration and the diversity lottery. The vote failed 193-231. Russell was the only member of Oklahoma’s delegation to vote against it.
“The idea of family migration,” Russell said in his speech Wednesday, “now demonized as chain migration, was originally conceived as a way to ensure immigrants arriving had a support-based structure, negating or reducing the need for government assistance. It has largely achieved that aim.”
He cited a study published earlier this year that found diversity lottery beneficiaries and family migrants, “far from being unskilled and ignorant, are actually better educated than naturally born citizens.”
The Russell speech followed President Donald Trump’s decision Wednesday to roll back his own zero-tolerance policy for illegal border crossings. That policy was responsible for the increase in family separations, which nationwide polling found to be unpopular.
Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Tulsa, was sitting next to Trump at the White House when he made the announcement. He said in an interview that Trump’s tendency to abruptly change course stems from his time as a business executive, when he made all decisions unilaterally.
“To me, it’s not more difficult, it’s more entertaining,” Inhofe said of Trump’s style.
Democrats challenging Russell have seized on the Trump administration’s family separation policy as they campaign ahead of Tuesday’s primary. Kendra Horn, speaking to volunteers at a phone bank this week, called it heartbreaking and inhumane.
“Keeping families together is the right thing to do and an issue elected officials and the American people overwhelmingly agree on,” she said.