Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas)
(CNSNews) -- Representative Steve Stockman (R-Tex.) predicts that the Republican Party will lose Arizona, Texas, and Florida if the Senate Gang of Eight’s immigration bill passes.
“If that bill passes in the current form from the Senate side, you can kiss Arizona, Texas, and Florida gone – that’s why the Democrats are so interested in this,” Stockman said during an interview last week with Iowa radio host Steve Deace.
“It has nothing to do with fairness and it has everything to do with election politics . . it was really to be used, along with the gun bill, in 2014 as the reason to turn over the House to the Democrats.”
June 27, 2013 - 1:14 PM
By Alissa Tabirian
Stockman noted that Republicans lost control of California following the amnesty bill signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986. “None of the people voted for us. They did the exact opposite – it was like we did it and then we got punished for it.”
When asked about the fate of the Senate immigration bill in the House of Representatives, Stockman said that the Gang of Eight cannot withstand the “gang of millions” of Americans who do not support amnesty for illegal aliens.
When Deace asked him if “there was any chance at all” the GOP House leadership would pass the Senate bill, Stockman replied that House Speaker John Boehner assured him that it would not even be brought up in the House chamber.
“I had a meeting with the speaker, and it’s entirely possible that, you know, he could be lying to me, but he tends to agree that this is the way the Senate bill is, and the way I understood his communication to me... the Senate bill was not palatable and would not even really be brought up in the House. I hope he keeps to his word on that. We’ll see.”
The Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform bill, currently consisting of 1,922 pages, would provide a pathway to citizenship for approximately 11 million illegal immigrants. Republican Senators Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) support it. But GOP Senators Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), Rand Paul (R-Tenn.) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) , who have labeled the reforms as amnesty without border security, are among its chief critics.
The House of Representatives has introduced its own package of immigration legislation, including the Strengthen and Fortify Enforcement (SAFE) Act, the Legal Workforce Act, the Agricultural Guestworker Act, and the Supplying Knowledge-based Immigrants and Lifting Levels of STEM Visas (SKILLS) Act., which have been assigned to various House committees for consideration.
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