Immigrants as scapegoats

[Dill]

(01-11-2019, 05:08 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: 1. That's a money thing. They know you have it. Many of the others probably don't.
2. That was nice of her, but did the group decide as a whole? or did she simply pick you? Maybe you are tall and she thought you'd be more comfortable? that's a myriad of reasons that might not be just cause you are white.

Oh yes, developing countries, they look to whites as having money that's all. That's why we pay more sometimes, they know they can ask for more money and we have it, a local will argue over a penny.

But, who holds the majority of the positions of power in those Asian Countries? Whites or Asians?

Just a quick response. 

1. Few people have more money than Qataris.  And no Westerners are put before Qataris in any line in Qatar. Yet Qataris decide to put White westerners before brown westerners and brown anyone else, who also might have money. And they do not get any extra money for doing this.
A Jordanian friend of mine has studied a similar phenomenon in Jordan, which is not so rich. His interest was in how Jordanians themselves view white people (or westerners at least, not so much Russians). No kidding. I have been amazed at times at the unearned privilege accorded me by Jordanians. E.g. a General invites me to parties at his home and his country house.  Why? He gets no money. I get great food. Lots of it.  I'm given tour of a military base overlooking the border with Israel. Why? I don't work for any government. I am not a military person. I see no immediate benefit for my guides or the base commander beyond affirming the friendship between our countries. Either it's because I am white (and not Jewish) or because I am just an especially cool guy that people anywhere would naturally want to feed and show around.

2. The stewardess did not explain. Sure, a myriad of reasons why she picked the one white guy, not another tall guy, or, as I suggested, a mother with child. Because I had more money? She was hoping for a tip?  (By the way, there is a reverse valency here too. Once I was rousted from my 2 star hotel in Mumbai at three in the morning because police wanted to know why a white guy, visaed through an Arab country, would be staying there.  I.e., looked inappropriate to their intel. At first I was angry at the uber-apologetic hotel owner, whom I presumed had called the police. But when I went downstairs the next morning, I found they had ransacked the hotel's records as well, as these were still stacked on the floors and counter.  Apparently my visa had called surveillance down on them.)

I agree that "they" know we have money in the sense that some developing countries have very poor people who can read tourists for income.  But that does not account for the examples I have presented. It doesn't explain why people in government who have power over whites in their country should continue colonial preferences for which they receive no immediate benefit. This is in fact an issue much discussed across Asia, given that the more historically minded find this practice insulting.  India is a fine example.

https://qz.com/india/992438/the-guilty-privilege-of-being-a-white-woman-in-india/
http://theconversation.com/white-mens-privilege-in-emerging-economies-isnt-measured-it-should-be-75557
https://thefamiliarstrange.com/2017/10/18/when-white-australian-privilege-becomes-uncomfortably-familiar/
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/let-s-talk-about-racism-india-is-open-to-foreigners-if-they-are-white/story-EjiKF6iFgmMZqFYR3hrcLI.html

By the way, in all the Asian countries I have been in, I have only ever seen Asians in power. That fact is what makes my "privilege" apparent.

So to reaffirm my point--"white privilege" is NOT limited to predominately white countries.  It is not simply a function of who is in charge in a given country.  "Privilege" in this sense is not to be confused with rights of citizenship in a given country, as if there were Kenyan privilege in Kenya and Mongolian privilege in Mongolia.

[Belsnickel]

(01-11-2019, 05:01 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: Oh so that's why Asians have all of the power in Asian countries.
So then other countries must also have Systematic racism.

Yes. Racism is everywhere and is systemic everywhere you go. That's how the world works. You may be missing the fact, though, that white people are internationally treated better than other minorities in non-white majority countries. It is almost a guarantee. That's white privilege, and privilege is based on racism.

[Dill]

(12-26-2018, 08:51 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: So, there is a theory in sociology that is used to try to explain prejudice called the scapegoat theory. It isn't 100% correct for a number of reasons that I won't get into, but the gist is that people will blame another group for their woes and so that fosters this prejudice. Another theory is based on conflict, and that the elites promote this prejudice to benefit themselves.

This isn't to deny that immigration has been an issue for many years, but the interesting thing to think about is how in certain populist movements there have been efforts by populist leaders to focus attention of their followers onto a demographic group to blame for their ills. We've seen this all throughout history where a racial, ethnic, or national group or groups are used as scapegoats to create a foil. This is often used to distract from the growing socioeconomic differences between those in power and the rest of the population. The rich get richer on the backs of the poor while they convince the poor that another group of poor people are to blame. They are taking their jobs, their benefits, etc.

In actuality, poor people that are a part of the majority have more in common with the poor people in the minority group being used as a scapegoat than they do with those that they are being manipulated by.

Just some interesting thoughts.

Forum still open on Saturday? Ok. John B. Judis, in The Populist Exploson: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics, argues an interesting distinction between left and right-wing populism. 

He says that left-wing populism is "dyadic," positing the people versus an elite. 

Right-wing populism also affirms a people versus and elite, but is "triadic" in that it involves a third group--Jews, Muslims, immigrants--which populists then accuse the elite of "coddling" (in Judis' words).  Hence the often tremendous anger at other poor or disadvantaged folks, who may also (I add) be characterized as taking something away from the "real" people, diminishing their economic returns or somehow getting more "privileges" than the real people, even as this third group is protected by the elites. 

I happened to think of this as I was pondering the puzzling rage which the term "White privilege" sometimes generates. Some people just want to know what the term means and what (or whether) it describes. Others quickly gloss it to cover whining minorities who still blame whitey for their problems, and insist whites have no privilege whatsoever, or no longer if they once had it, or that really there are all kinds of privileges which non-white males have and non-whites can be racist too, and the like. One group of whites responds to it as a term of social-historical inquiry and another group responds as if it were a personal accusation.

What accounts for the difference in reception? Are the former representatives of the "elite"? Do the latter fall into the right-wing populist category?

[Belsnickel]

(01-12-2019, 05:30 PM)Dill Wrote: What accounts for the difference in reception? Are the former representatives of the "elite"? Do the latter fall into the right-wing populist category?

I don't know what exactly accounts for the difference, but I don't think either is true. I know privilege-skeptical liberals, as well. I have some theories on this, but I think discussing them would result in multiple members getting defensive, accusations of insults, and potential disciplinary actions as the thread devolved.

[Dill]

(01-12-2019, 06:01 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: I don't know what exactly accounts for the difference, but I don't think either is true. I know privilege-skeptical liberals, as well. I have some theories on this, but I think discussing them would result in multiple members getting defensive, accusations of insults, and potential disciplinary actions as the thread devolved.

LOl, you risked all that the moment started a thread on immigrants as scapegoats. 

Privilege skeptical liberals there may be, but do they get all ANGRY about about the term and continue to mis-gloss it and devise exculpatory examples no matter what? 

No need to answer but I'd like to pose the question to everyone anyway, though I don't want to get your thread locked.  I'll back off if "devolution" follows.

[GMDino]

I don't know if this should be in a new thread or one of the other dozen immigration related threads.

I just know it's a damn shame.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/01/17/ice-tried-deport-marine-born-u-s-and-mom-wants-answers/2602772002/

Quote:ICE tried to deport a U.S.-born Marine, and his mom wants to know why


Jilmar Ramos-Gomez was born and raised in Grand Rapids, joining the U.S. Marines after high school and becoming a decorated veteran who served in Afghanistan. 


But despite his service — and despite being a U.S. citizen — Ramos-Gomez was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials for deportation after he was arrested on trespassing charges, said immigration attorneys. ICE and county officials had confused Ramos-Gomez, 27, with being an immigrant even though he had his U.S. passport and other ID on him at the time of his arrest.


Last month, after Ramos-Gomez was released on bond, ICE officials transported him from Kent County jail to an immigrant detention center in Calhoun County. He was set to be deported, until his mother contacted an attorney to rescue him from jail. 


The detention has outraged his family and civil rights attorneys who say it's an example of how immigration and county officials have become overzealous in immigration enforcement. They also say it's an example of racial profiling of Latinos by immigration officials, and police.

Advocates with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Michigan Immigrant Rights Center sent a letter Wednesday to Kent County officials asking for documents and information about what exactly happened to the veteran Marine.


"I don't feel good about what they did to my son," Maria Gomez-Velaquez, his mother, told the Free Press during a phone interview. "They were not listening to my son even though he had ID on him. It's not right. My son is from here, he's born here, a United States citizen. He served in the Marines, the military, but they don't care what my son did for his country."

Officials with ICE, Kent County Sheriff, and Calhoun County Sheriff could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.
Kent County Undersheriff Chuck DeWitt told the Associated Press that ICE had contacted them to hold Ramos-Gomez. "Once he was released from our custody, he was under the domain of ICE. Where they take him is their process," DeWitt said. "Our procedures were followed."


Former Marine has PTSD, episodes
Ramos-Gomez served in Afghanistan from 2011 to 2014 as a tank crewman and lance corporal. He was awarded a a global war on terrorism service medal, national defense service medal, an Afghanistan campaign medal, and a combat action ribbon, among other awards, said the ACLU. 

"But when he returned home, he was a shell of his former self, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after what he had seen," according to an ACLU letter to Kent County officials. "His family reports that he is focused on returning for his Marine brothers in Afghanistan."


Ramos-Gomez developed some symptoms of PTSD after his service in Afghanistan and has "episodes where he disappears and when he is found again, he often has no recollection of where he has been," the letter stated.


On Nov. 21, he was arrested after "apparently damaging a fire alarm at Spectrum Health (in Grand Rapids) and trespassing on the heliport," said the letter by his supporters. "The police report shows that Mr. Ramos-Gomez had his passport on him when he was arrested."


He pleaded guilty to trespassing and on Dec. 14, a judge ordered him to be released on a personal bond. His mother, an immigrant from Guatemala, then went to pick him up from the jail. 


When she arrived, she was told that ICE had put him on a bus to the immigrant detention center in Calhoun County in Battle Creek, more than an hour away.


The mother told them they made a mistake, that her son was a U.S. citizen who had lived in the U.S. his entire life. But moments later, she saw the immigration bus in the parking lot, leaving for Battle Creek with her son inside.


"I felt like I was ready to have a heart attack," said Gomez-Velaquez. "I saw my son going in an immigration van and I don't believe it. I thought it's a joke."


She then contacted an attorney, but since it was a Friday, her son was held there over the weekend. 


On Monday, the attorney showed up and convinced them to release Ramos-Gomez after saying he had documents that clearly showed he was a U.S. citizen. 


Why detain a U.S. citizen? 
Ramos-Gomez's mother wants answers. "What did they do to my son?" she said.  


Ramos-Gomez is currently staying at a hospital recuperating from PTSD issues, which his attorneys worry may have been made worse by his experience being detained by immigration officials. 


"It is appalling that ICE would be so sloppy and callous and careless that they would target a U.S. citizen, a combat veteran who served his country and try to deport him from the very country he is serving," said Miriam Aukerman, a senior attorney at 
the ACLU of Michigan. "It is absolutely outrageous."


Hillary Scholten, an attorney with Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, said this case illustrates problems with what is known as the immigration detainers, in which ICE requests that local jails hold inmates beyond their release date if they are immigrants that officials want to detain and deport. 


Immigrant advocates say that system is unconstitutional and leads to abuses. In Wayne County, the sheriff ended the detainer system in 2017 after concerns were raised by civil rights activists. 


Aukerman said local "jails should not volunteer resources to work with a deportation machinery that is sloppy, overzealous and makes mistakes with frightening frequency."


In the case of Ramos-Gomez, "he was supposed to be released, but Kent County held him for ICE," said Scholten.


Scholten said that county officials in Kent say that they are merely doing what ICE asked of them, but she said it's unclear how ICE arrived at the conclusion that Ramos-Gomez was an immigrant who should be detained. Who gave the information to ICE?, she asked. Or, she said, did ICE confuse him with another person?


According to a report last year in the Los Angeles Times, the problem of ICE detaining U.S. citizens is widespread, with ICE "agents repeatedly targeting U.S. citizens for deportation by mistake, making wrongful arrests based on incomplete government records, bad data and lax investigations."


More: Feds targeting more worksites crack down on undocumented workers – but not their employers


This case also highlights the issue of Latinos who are U.S. citizens being profiled. The Free Press has reported how citizens who are Latinos are sometimes randomly stopped and interrogated by federal agents. 


"It's fair to say it would be extremely unlikely that a Caucasian detainee would end up in immigration proceedings" like Gomez-Ramos, who is Latino, did, said Aukerman.


While the mother of Gomez-Ramos is an immigrant from Guatemala, it's unclear what country ICE wanted to deport Ramos-Gomez to.


The ACLU's letter asks Kent County to provide an explanation of what happened to Gomez-Ramos at their next County 
Commission meeting on Jan. 24. "Ramos-Gomez, his family, and the public all deserve to know how and why the Sheriff’s 
Department delivered Mr. Ramos-Gomez to ICE," the letter reads. 

"Kent County is definitely very much at fault," said Scholten. "They can't just blindly follow what ICE asks them to do."

[Dill]

(01-17-2019, 04:40 PM)GMDino Wrote:

Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck . . . .

[GMDino]

Again...could have gone in any wall/immigration thread:

https://www.lawfareblog.com/case-closed-justice-department-wont-stand-behind-its-report-immigrants-and-terrorism

Quote:Case Closed: The Justice Department Won’t Stand Behind Its Report on Immigrants and Terrorism



Don’t look now, but the United States Department of Justice just came perilously close to admitting that it engaged in disinformation about immigrants and terrorism in a formal government report.


I say perilously close, because the department did not quite admit it; in fact, the letter sent to a group of people, including me, who had raised concerns about a report the Justice Department published last January, announces that the department has concluded that “the Report should not be withdrawn or corrected.”


But the letter, sent to us by Deputy Assistant Attorney General Michael H. Allen, also concedes that “the Report could be criticized by some readers, consistent with some of the concerns presented,” and promises that the department will follow the “principles” of an obscure law known as the Information Quality Act better “in issuing future reports ... to better present such information to the public.” This is about as close as the Trump administration is going to get to admitting that it used a formal government report to distort data to slime Muslims and immigrants.


Let’s back up and consider the whole story in context.


It all began in February 2017, when President Trump told this lie during his first address to a joint session of Congress: “according to data provided by the Department of Justice, the vast majority of individuals convicted of terrorism and terrorism-related offenses since 9/11 came here from outside of our country.”


As I later wrote, with Nora Ellingsen and Lisa Daniels:

Quote:We were suspicious of this claim, so Ellingsen and Daniels dug into the data. They discovered that the publicly available Justice Department data simply did not show that a majority of terrorist or terrorist-related crimes were committed by people who came from abroad. For one thing, this data set does not include domestic terrorism convictions. That is, it does not capture domestic terrorism subjects, who are more likely to be white and natural-born U.S. citizens. Leaving out those convictions is a big mistake. [W]hen Ellingsen and Daniels wrote about President Trump’s executive order, they found that 1,306 defendants had been convicted of domestic terrorism offenses in the U.S. since 1996. That’s more than twice the number of international terrorism convictions during the same period.

What’s more, the list included almost 100 foreign-born defendants who were extradited into the United States and therefore never would have been affected by U.S. immigration policy. That is, even excluding domestic terrorism cases, it was possible to support the president’s claim only if one counted as foreign-born terrorism suspects people the United States had actively imported in order to prosecute for terrorism or terrorism-related crimes.

In their original analysis, Ellingsen and Daniels concluded:

Quote:what would the numbers look like if we excluded extradited subjects while including all of these domestic terrorists—the approach that seems to us the unbiased way to express the real rate at which foreign-born, as opposed to domestic-born, people are committing terrorist or terrorism-related crimes?
If we clean up the data to account for the issues described above, instead of accounting for between 63 and 71 percent of terrorism convictions, foreign-born persons would likely account for between only 18 and 21 percent of terrorism convictions.

The Justice Department long ago threw Trump under the bus as misrepresenting its data in the specific speech. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request I filed, the department provided correspondence showing, as Ellingsen and I summarized, that,

Quote:career officials at the Justice Department did not, in fact, support the irresponsible and false statement the president made. Indeed, while they provided [a] list of cases, they specifically warned that the material excluded domestic terrorism matters and could only be used to support generic statements that the Justice Department had prosecuted a lot of cases. And while they worked with FBI to scrape together some national origin information, they did so only with respect to that dataset, and the FBI specifically warned that it might not be accurate.

What’s more, last summer, the Justice Department followed up with a letter to mesaying that it did not even have records reflecting the number of domestic terrorism prosecutions:

Quote:On June 12, 2018, you reached an agreement with [the Justice Department] to resolve certain issues in dispute in this litigation, whereby [Justice] would conduct a search for records containing data of (i) all individuals convicted of all terrorism-related offenses (domestic and international) between 2001 and the date of the initial search, or (ii) all individuals convicted of all domestic terrorism-related offenses between 2001 and the date of the initial search.... [N]o responsive records were located.

Yet even as this litigation was taking place, last January, the department—along with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—produced the report at issue in the current letter. That report stopped short of Trump’s outright falsehoods, by avoiding the use of the term “terrorism” in a fashion that included only international terrorism and excluded the much larger category of domestic terrorism. Yet the report still contained gross distortions. As Ellingsen, Daniels and I summarized at the time:

Quote:The Justice Department did not publish the data underlying its report but, instead, indicated that the department reviewed the cases of 549 individuals who were convicted of international terrorism-related charges in U.S. federal courts between Sept. 11, 2001, and Dec. 31, 2016. The National Security Division previously released the list of terrorism-related convictions between Sept. 11, 2001, and Dec. 31, 2015, in response to a FOIA request, but an updated list was not attached to this report. Note that the defendants on this list were not all convicted on material support or other terrorism charges per se. The pool is actually much larger and includes obstruction of justice, fraud, or immigration charges when there is a nexus to terrorism.

The new report actually adds little new information to the discussion. Regarding terrorism-related convictions, it provides only a couple of quick and sterile numbers: Of the 549 individuals who were convicted of international terrorism-related charges in U.S. federal courts, the report indicates that 402 of those individuals, or 73 percent, were foreign-born:

• 254 were not U.S. citizens;
• 148 were foreign-born, naturalized and received U.S. citizenship; and,
• 147 were U.S. citizens by birth.
  

That’s it. The report adds some color to those numbers by highlighting eight terrorism cases that it describes as “illustrative examples” of international terrorism convictions and provides short blurbs on each defendant.
These defendants come from Sudan, Uzbekistan, India, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and Pakistan and immigrated to the U.S. as early as 1980. As the White House is careful to point out in its press release, three of those men entered the U.S. on the basis of family ties and extended-family chain migration. Two others entered through the visa lottery program.

In addition, the report indicates that the administration is broadening the scope of its inquiry to include tracking the citizenship status of the parents of 147 natural-born U.S. citizens on its list. A footnote in the report indicates that information is not available at the time of publication, but the White House noted, in response to the report’s issuance, that terrorist attacks have been carried out by children of foreign-born individuals, including the Orlando nightclub and San Bernardino shootings.

Because the report adds little by way of new information, the numbers it reports are broadly consistent with the earlier Ellingsen-Daniels analysis. The report’s data set is larger because more recent convictions were included—549 individuals compared to 455 individuals studied by Ellingsen and Daniels. Of those 549, 73 percent—or 402—were born abroad. Likewise, the Ellingsen-Daniels analysis showed that about 70 percent were born abroad. The trouble is that this top-line number is so misleading, for all the reasons the Ellingsen-Daniels analysis describes.

It was in response to this report that a group of us—Ben Berwick of Protect Democracy, Faiza Patel of the Brennan Center, Michael Crowley, Ellingsen and I—filed a petitionunder an obscure statute called the Information Quality Act to have the report corrected or withdrawn. Two other groups, Democracy Forward and Muslim Advocates, filed a similar petition and have received a similar response from the Justice Department.


Let me confess at the outset that when Berwick, who has represented us in the matter and some accompanying litigation, approached me about the idea of an IQA petition, I was skeptical. I agreed to be part of it not because I thought the department would likely acknowledge error but because Protect Democracy was representing me in all of the FOIA litigation described above, Berwick clearly wanted to give this a try, and I thought the petition might be a good way of establishing a strong factual record of how the Trump administration was abusing data. I was very wrong. The results are pretty astonishing.


They were not, at first. Indeed, the initial response to our petition was pretty predictable. In a letter dated July 31, the department informed us that it “has determined that there is no inconsistency” between the report and the requirement of the IQA or its implementing guidelines. “The Department concludes that neither retraction nor correction of information in [the report] is required under the IQA Guidelines.”
We appealed. And it was this appeal that the department rejected—sort of—with its extraordinary letter of late last year.


The letter responded to us on seven distinct points, on each of which it determined not to withdraw or correct the report. On none of the points did the department contend that our arguments about the data are incorrect; the most it argued was that its presentation of data was defensible and within the bounds of reasonable interpretation. And on several points, the department pretty explicitly ate a well-deserved dish of crow:

• On our concern that the inclusion in the report of foreign-born but naturalized U.S. citizens was wildly distortive, the department now says that, “[I]n future reports, the Department can strive to minimize the potential for misinterpretation through, to the extent possible, more thorough explanation of the context for information and clearer differentiation of the information presented, and by noting when information presented goes beyond the specific dictates of Section 11. The Department will proceed accordingly in future Section 11 reports.”
• On our concern that the department includes people brought to the U.S. for prosecution, the department writes that it “appreciates the suggestion that disaggregating information about foreign nationals brought to the United States for prosecution for terrorism-related offenses committed outside the United States, and providing a more thorough discussion of the limitations of the data presented, would further promote the perception of objectivity in the presentation of information.” It says it will “work with DHS [the Department of Homeland Security] in future reports” to do so.
• On our concern that the eight “illustrative examples” are cherry-picked and not representative, the department now “acknowledges that a focus on eight seemingly similar ‘illustrative examples’ from a list of more than 400 convictions would cause some readers of the Report to question its objectivity.” It agrees that “the objectivity and transparency of future Reports could be enhanced by releasing underlying data . . . and could provide readers with more complete information from which to draw their own conclusions.” And it says that if examples are included in future reports, it will “work with DHS” to make sure they are “more varied” and will make clear they are “not intended to be representative of all cases.”
• On our concerns about gross distortions of gender-based violence, while dismissing the matter as “mere editorial error,” the department writes that it “appreciates being made aware of such errors so that they will not be repeated.”
  

In short, the department’s position appears to be that it acknowledges error and promises not to make such errors again in the future; it just doesn’t acknowledge that the errors are bad enough to warrant correction.



Whatevs, guys. I could wax at some length about how wrong it is for the government to put out a report on a critical matter of national security designed to influence the public’s understanding of national security and immigration policy, to acknowledge that is full of errors and could be perceived to lack objectivity, and yet to refuse to do anything about it. I could complain all day about a decision to let that report stand as the government's definitive statement on the matter, so that readers of the report won't have any way of knowing how flawed it is. But I’m not going to do that.


Because at this point, from my vantage point, the record is quite clear: The president of the United States told a frank falsehood to a joint session of Congress, citing Justice Department data that do not exist in order to do so. 


He did this despite warnings from career FBI and Justice Department officials that the real data could not support such statements. And the Justice Department, a year later, released a report that—while stopping short of the president’s outright falsehoods—was designed to be as suggestive of them as possible; while the department will not retract this report, it also will not defend it, and it has committed itself, as I read its letter, to not repeating its error in this tawdry episode.


Here’s hoping that, at least, is the truth.

[GMDino]

https://www.rollcall.com/news/house-floor-erupts-go-back-puerto-rico

Quote:House floor erupts after GOP lawmaker shouts ‘Go back to Puerto Rico’
Spokesman says Rep. Jason Smith was referring to ‘vacationing’ Democrats who went to inspect hurricane recovery


House Democrats will investigate Trump for allegedly directing Michael Cohen to lie to Congress
GOP congressman apologizes to Democratic rep for ‘Go back to Puerto Rico’ outburst
Louie Gohmert comes to Steve King’s defense

Pelosi spokesman says White House leaked commercial travel plans to Afghanistan
House Democrats’ latest gambit for ending shutdown involves bills Republicans negotiated
House floor erupts after GOP lawmaker shouts ‘Go back to Puerto Rico’
    

The House floor erupted Thursday shortly before Congress adjourned for the week when Republican Rep. Jason Smith yelled a potentially racially charged remark across the aisle as Democratic Rep. Tony Cárdenas was at the podium.


“Go back to Puerto Rico!” the Missouri congressman shouted, punctuating a stream of Republican whooping and hollering at the Democratic majority for initially rejecting their request to redo a vote on a continuing resolution to reopen shuttered agencies through Feb. 28.


Democrats had called for a voice vote on the CR, as is typical with most votes, and Republicans wanted a roll call vote to show most of their members objected to the measure. Democrats said they never requested one, but some Republicans disputed that.

Afterward, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer noted the Puerto Rico comment that he said was directed at Cárdenas of California. 


‘I’m not sure what’s going on, but I object’: Confusion on House floor Thursday during attempted shutdown-ending vote

“I would hope that we could refrain from any implications which have any undertones of prejudice or racism or any kind of ‘ism’ that would diminish the character … of any of our fellow members,” the Maryland Democrat said.


Smith’s spokesman Joey Brown confirmed he was the member who shouted, “Go back to Puerto Rico,” but said the remark was not directed at Cárdenas.


“Congressman Smith’s comment was directed at all the Democrats who were vacationing down in Puerto Rico last weekend during the government shutdown, not towards any individual member,” Brown said. 


Dozens of House and Senate Democrats were in Puerto Rico last weekend for a trip organized by Bold PAC, the political arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus that is led by Cárdenas, some of whom stayed for a separate Latino Victory political summit.

“I was shocked, because I often heard those kinds of comments when I was a kid growing up in Pacoima, California,” Cárdenas told Roll Call.


But Cárdenas indicated that he and Smith are patching things up after Smith called him and “took responsibility for the comment and sincerely apologized.”


Cárdenas said he accepted the apology.


After the comment was shouted, Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and other Democrats in the chamber shot out of their seats demanding to know who said it.


Cárdenas walked over to the Republican side of the aisle and huddled with some GOP lawmakers, but none stepped forward to admit they had shouted the remark.


“It came from the other side of the chamber. ... We don’t know who it is,” Jackson Lee said, declining to speculate on who might have been responsible.


“I would hope maybe privately the individual would go to Mr. Cárdenas and appropriately apologize,” Jackson Lee said.


The C-SPAN cameras were still rolling when the commotion over the Puerto Rico comment broke out. But it would be nearly impossible to definitively identify who shouted the remark because multiple Republican members were murmuring or shouting at the time and the comment came from someone who was not at a microphone or the podium.


A source who was on the floor told Roll Call that it was Smith, the Republican Conference secretary, who made the comment. 


Democrats who were present for the commotion felt the remark was racially motivated. 


“We’ve been called names and been told to go back to Mexico, go back to whatever, so many times,” Texas Rep. Sylvia Garcia said. “It’s just unfortunate that it would happen on the floor of the House of Representatives.”


Whether the Puerto Rico comment was racially motivated or a reference to Democrats’ trip there, “it was a aspersion on a Hispanic that he ought to go back to Puerto Rico,“ Hoyer told reporters.


Asked why he thought it was an attack on Cárdenas, Hoyer said, “Because he thinks it was directed at him because he was over there and somebody yelled at him.”


Minority Whip Steve Scalise, who had been corresponding with Hoyer about the CR vote proceedings, was not given an opportunity to respond on the floor when Hoyer asserted there were racial undertones to the Puerto Rico comment. He told Roll Call after that he’d let whoever said it speak for themselves but he doubts there were any racial motivations to the comment.


“None of our members would have made any kind of derogatory term to Mr. Cardenas,” the Louisiana Republican said.
Ultimately the Democrats agreed by unanimous consent to vacate the proceedings on the CR and hold a roll call vote next Wednesday.

Rep. Steny Hoyer called for civility in Congress after a Republican yelled ‘Go back to Puerto Rico!’ at Rep. Tony Cárdenas, who is from California pic.twitter.com/cMKReFBLal

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) January 18, 2019

These angry Republicans need to calm down.  

[BmorePat87]

(01-18-2019, 12:43 PM)GMDino Wrote: https://www.rollcall.com/news/house-floor-erupts-go-back-puerto-rico

Rep. Steny Hoyer called for civility in Congress after a Republican yelled ‘Go back to Puerto Rico!’ at Rep. Tony Cárdenas, who is from California pic.twitter.com/cMKReFBLal

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) January 18, 2019

These angry Republicans need to calm down.  

Cárdenas is the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus' Bold PAC that organized the trip to Puerto Rico. I don't think he was suggesting he was from Puerto Rico. 

Certainly looks terrible, though.

[GMDino]

(01-18-2019, 01:38 PM)BmorePat87 Wrote: Cárdenas is the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus' Bold PAC that organized the trip to Puerto Rico. I don't think he was suggesting he was from Puerto Rico. 

Certainly looks terrible, though.

And the person who yelled it even apologized because he knew he looked bad.

It goes to show the level of disrespect right now.