Texas Republican: End Legal Immigration or We’ll Never Elect a Conservative President Again

A local Texas Republican Party official is arguing that the nation must close its borders to all immigration, legal or otherwise, if the GOP ever wants to elect another American president.

“With every passing year it’s getting harder and harder to elect a Republican president, and frankly, if things don’t change, in a few years it will be next to impossible,” writes Peter Morrison, treasurer of the Hardin Country Republican Party in Southeast Texas, in one of his periodic e-newsletters today. “That’s because immigrants, far from being natural conservatives, prefer the Democrats by about a two to one margin, and every year they and their descendants make up a bigger part of the voting population.”

You might recall that Morrison and other right-wingers worked (unsuccessfully) to oust Republican Joe Straus of San Antonio as Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives following the 2010 elections. They thought Straus wasn’t conservative enough, and Morrison also pointed out that Straus’ opponents in the contest for Speaker were Christians. Straus is Jewish.

Morrison has in the past portrayed white Christians as victims of an increasingly diverse American electorate. He blames minorities and “maggots” for President Obama’s re-election, and he worries about maintaining the “traditional American demographic status quo.” So it’s not surprising to see him argue in his email today that bringing “legal immigration to a virtual halt” is necessary “so that our grandchildren won’t grow up in an alien and hostile culture.”

Of course, Morrison doesn’t think immigration has always been bad. It’s just that today, you see, we’re getting the wrong kind of immigrants:

“Until 1965, immigration was largely restricted to people from Europe, where the vast majority of Americans had their roots.  The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 changed all that. Now, 90% of immigrants are non-European, and they’re coming here at the rate of about a million a year.  They’ve been doing so for decades, and that is the main reason why it has become nearly impossible to elect a Republican president.”

But why can’t Republicans attract the support of these new, non-European immigrants? Welfare, apparently:

“When asked if they prefer a bigger government providing more services, or a smaller one providing fewer, 55% of Asians and 75% of Hispanics said they prefer a bigger government.  Most immigrants are poor, and many receive government handouts for many years after moving here.”

Morrison worries that “the greatest country in the history of the world has become a dumping ground for the offspring of the poor of Central and South America.” So European immigrants weren’t poor?

But there’s another reason to stop immigration, he writes (emphasis added):

“Making things even worse, many immigrants despise us and our children, even as millions of them flock here.  To them, we’re a bunch of racists who deserve nothing but their contempt.  They also have no attachment to our history and roots, and many of them couldn’t care less about the Constitution. … Making matters even worse is that every single non-European immigrant is entitled to affirmative action and other racial preferences the moment they get off the plane.  Not only will conservatives be outnumbered politically in the not too distant future, our children are going to grow up surrounded by people who have more rights than they do, and who despise everything they represent.”

Wait. Immigrants think people like Morrison are racists? That’s outrageous! What in the world would give them that idea?