Rep. Labrador (R-ID): Bad Immigration Reform Spells 'Death of the Republican Party'

On Sunday, Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID), an immigration reform advocate in the House of Representatives, said that the Republicans had to do immigration reform right, or it wouldn’t be worth doing. “If we don’t do it right politically,” he said to Meet the Press (NBC), “it’s going to be the death of the Republican Party. If we do it right, I think it’s going to be good for us, but if we don’t do it right, what’s going to happen is that we’re going to lose our base becase we’re still going to have a large number of illegal immigrants coming into the United States, and the Hispanic community is not going to listen to us because they’re going to always listen to at this point to the people that are offering more, that are offering a faster pathway to citizenship, all those things, so I think we lose on both grounds if we don’t do it right.”

Labrador did criticize the Senate immigration bill, stating, “They put the legalization of 11 million people ahead of security,” and adding that if the bill gave control over declaring the border secure to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, “Napolitano has already said that the border is secure…. Napolitano’s going come to Congress and tell us that the border is already secure and nothing else needs to happen.”