Governor Reynolds Signs Copy Cat Bill in Shameful Act of Xenophobia
New Law Shreds Once Proud Iowa Record on Humanitarian Help for Refugees
Imagine this nonsense if you will:
It’s a bright, sunny, Saturday afternoon in central Iowa. The Summer air is warm but not too hot. Iowa Farmer Jones is spending the afternoon fishing in the Raccoon River which runs through his farm. The catfish are biting. Life is good.
The only fly in the ointment for this idyllic dream is that Farmer Jones doesn’t have an Iowa fishing license. He’s actually been without one for a couple of years, but that hasn’t stopped him from enjoying Iowa’s abundant fishing opportunities.
It has never been a problem.
Until it became one. Today. Right now, in fact, as an FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) SWAT team pops over a nearby hill and rushes toward the river and Farmer Jones.
The FBI somehow found out about Farmer Jones’ unsanctioned fishing forays into the Raccoon River, rushed to his farm, quickly surrounded him on the river bank, and arrested him.
The charge? Fishing without a valid Iowa fishing license.
Crazy right?
Yes. Of course.
So crazy that the story I just asked you to imagine, indeed, never happened, nor will it ever happen. It is not the FBI’s responsibility to enforce Iowa’s fishing and hunting licensing laws. The FBI - the Federal Bureau of Investigation - “stays in its own lane,” pursuing its own constitutional responsibilities - to enforce federal laws.
Up until recently, under both Democrats and Republicans, state law enforcement has done the same in all 50 states.
Key words: Until recently.
Things have changed. Under the “leadership” of the hyper partisan Texas Governor and “PT Barnum of the Political Theater of the Absurd” Greg Abbott (R-TX), Texas recently gave Texas law enforcement the “authority” to start arresting suspected undocumented refugees and immigrants in that state.
Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution makes pretty clear that is not the job of Texas or any other state - it is a federal responsibility.
Never ones to let a bad, partisan idea go without imitation, Iowa Republican legislators and Republican Governor Kim Reynolds (R-IA) quickly kicked their copy cat machine into high gear and enacted very similar legislation to give Iowa law enforcement the same power.
On Wednesday, Reynolds signed into law legislation that would supposedly give Iowa law enforcement the power to arrest some undocumented refugees and immigrants, and would also give some Iowa judges the power to deport them.
Never mind that the US Constitution says they don’t have the authority to do that.
Never mind that enforcing federal immigration and refugee laws are not the constitutional responsibility of state and local law enforcement. It belongs to the federal government.
Never mind that state and local law enforcement are not trained to enforce federal immigration and refugee laws governing entry into the United States. Apparently Reynolds and the Republican legislature think it’s just fine for Iowa law officers to wing it.
Never mind that the law will expose legal, minority Iowa citizens - including those who have been part of our state for generations - to frequent harassment by racists, xenophobes, bigots and haters.
Never mind that Iowa is so far from being crime free that it is surprising to think the legislature and Governor think Iowa law enforcement has the time and resources to open up a whole new franchise: arresting and deporting suspected undocumented immigrants and refugees.
Which is not their job.
This is a shameful thing for Iowa to do given the humanitarian leadership the state showed in the 1970s under then-Governor Robert D. Ray when it came to helping Vietnamese “boat people” and Tai Dam refugees escape death in Southeast Asia and build new lives - in Iowa - as the Vietnam War ended.
Ray - and Iowans - won national accolades for their humanitarian leadership for that effort.
Reynolds and the Legislature rip that history and those accolades to shreds with this new law and the highly partisan xenophobia and racism they now embrace in the name of Iowa and Iowans.
“I didn’t think we could just sit here idly and say, ‘Let those people die.’ We wouldn’t want the rest of the world to say that about us if we were in the same situation,” Ray said, according to Iowa Public Broadcasting (IPB)
“Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you,” Ray said.
That sentiment is apparently not in the new “Republican Bible.” It’s now, “Do unto others as the MAGA zealots direct you to do. It’s been replaced with new extremist passages that celebrate and herald xenophobia and racism.
Two other important points need to be be mentioned in this discussion.
First, Iowa’s legislature and Governor Reynolds - who apparently has so few good ideas of her own that she routinely copies bad MAGA ideas from other Republican states, no matter how hateful, racist, or xenophobic - enacted a law patterned after the one in Texas which is currently blocked as its constitutionality is challenged in court.
Wouldn’t it be prudent to at least have that case resolved first, before plunging ahead with what will likely be resources wasted on an Iowa law likely to be declared unconstitutional?
One would think so. But Iowa’s copy cat governor doesn’t care. Let the hate and xenophobia flow!
But even that response gives Iowa’s legislature and governor too much credit. It presumes they think there are legitimate, sound policy views - at least as they see it - behind Iowa’s new hateful law.
They believe no such thing.
Like nearly everything else they do, pure, partisan politics drives this. It’s all part of the big Republican, never ending circus show. Performance Politics” has a welcoming home in Iowa’s Republican dominated government.
Passing the law gives Republicans a chance to weaponize talk about the “urgent need” to control the border, and to attack President Biden who - according to their lie - is not interested in increasing border security.
If President Biden won’t control the border, we will, so the phony Republican talking points go. We heard that exactly from Reynolds.
Left unsaid in that charade is that President Biden, Republicans, and Democrats in Congress negotiated the strongest, most effective border control package of reforms in decades this year and were poised to pass it. They were stopped dead in their tracks in February when Trump told Republicans to kill it because actually solving the border problem would be bad for his campaign.
He wants to campaign on that issue.
The Republican response? They genuflected and agreed to do the dirty work of the most corrupt man ever to sit in the White House, Donald Trump. Republicans killed the bill, as directed.
Yet, Republicans - including those in Iowa’s legislature and Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds - continue to pretend they actually care about border security. They do not.
It is, in reality, little more than a prop in their ideological, partisan, bigoted circus show.
Wednesday was not a proud day to be an Iowan.
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Reynolds law will be enforced with discretion of local law enforcement. If your farmer Jones was a person of color, he could be investigated to determine if had 'documents' and then arrested by Iowa law enforcement. Most of the folks working on roofs this spring have been from Central America.
Wondering when her business/economic development interests (“we need more laborers in Iowa”) will collide with her anti-immigrant (“we have to keep out those people not like us”) interests.
Probably depends on which side will enrich her most.