On today’s program of Sunday Morning Futures with popular Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo, House Freedom Caucus co-founder and mass migration enthusiast Rep. Mick Mulvaney declared that immigration is the top issue for voters in his state of South Carolina.
This Feb. 14 assertion seems to underscore the disconnect between Washington Republican politicians like Mulvaney, who push to further expand immigration levels, and the South Carolina voters whom they are elected to represent.
Bartiromo– who has been credited by conservatives for asking the most “substantive, focused, and important question” on immigration during the GOP debates to date– asked Mulvaney what he thought are the “most important issues to the people of South Carolina.”
Mulvaney said: “Immigration still drives a lot of things here. Immigration still drives a lot of the debate. You saw that last night… Candidates tended to agree on a lot of the areas until it got to immigration and it was a broad variety of policies on display and I thought that was helpful and good for the debate.”
Mulvaney did not mention where he comes down on the issue.
Mulvaney has a long record of pushing to expand immigration levels– a position opposed by at least 92 percent of Republican voters, according to Pew polling data.
On his website, Mulvaney calls for increasing immigration levels beyond all known historical markers. As Mulvaney writes in calling for increased visa dispensations: “The simple truth is our immigration system is broken… it’s too difficult to enter America the right way.”
However, as Mulvaney was later forced to admit in a radio interview with South Carolina talk radio host Bob McLain, Mulvaney has “no idea” what the nation’s current federal immigration policy is. “Honestly I have no idea what the number of legal, green cards [issued annually] is,” Mulvaney said, even though Mulvaney’s website suggests immigration rates should be increased even higher.
Moreover, video footage, captured during the height of the Gang of Eight amnesty push, reveals Mulvaney publicly demeaning his conservative constituents and colleagues, such as influential Iowa Congressman Rep. Steve King for opposing Rep. Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio’s agenda of mass amnesty—suggesting that such views are “absurd” and “stupid.”
“We need to stop celebrating the absurd in our party and stop rewarding the outrageous and the stupid,” Mulvaney said in 2013.
As PBS reported last year, “Mick Mulvaney [is] a Tea Party member who communicates with his Spanish-speaking constituents in their own language, and who chastises members of his party” for not moving towards the left’s position on immigration.
Similarly, in a congressional hearing last year, Mulvaney criticized Heritage scholar Robert Rector, who is considered to be “the father of the 1996 welfare-reform law,” for providing U.S. lawmakers with factual evidence that granting amnesty to poor migrants would strain the nation’s federal welfare programs at the expense of Mulvaney’s own taxpaying constituents. Mulvaney vehemently objected to Rector’s analysis and suggested that admitting poor and uneducated migrants who are “literally starving to death” in foreign countries would be a boon to America.
Mulvaney’s interview with Bartiromo seems to underscore the disconnect between many of South Carolina’s representatives and its electorate. For instance, Mick Mulvaney, Trey Gowdy, Lindsey Graham and Nikki Haley all support expansive immigration policies opposed by 92 percent of the GOP electorate.
The U.S. government currently provides more green cards to immigrants each month than South Carolina issues high school diplomas each year, according to a new chart issued by the Senate Immigration Subcommittee. Marco Rubio’s immigration plan, however, would have tripled green card issuances over the course of the next decade– permanently resettling a population of immigrants that is seven times larger than the population of South Carolina.
Interestingly, Mulvaney told Bartiromo that he thought Rubio– along with John Kasich– had the best performance in last night’s debate.
During his interview with Bartiromo, Mulvaney also falsely declared that that the word “debt and deficit” were “only mentioned twice last night. Once by Mr. Bush and once by Dr. Carson.”
It is unclear, however, how Mr. Mulvaney arrived at this assessment. As even a cursory review of last night’s transcript reveals that Mr. Trump used the word “debt” four times in his discussion of Jeb Bush’s record as Florida Governor and Mr. Cruz used the word as well in his closing statement. Trump also mentioned the $19 trillion figure in his closing remarks. Trump said: “Politicians are all talk, no action. You’ve seen where they’ve taken you to. We are $19 trillion right now. It’s going to be increased with that horrible budget from a month ago that was just approved by politicians. We need a change. We need a very big change. We’re going to make our country great again.”
Trump was referring to the omnibus spending bill pushed through Congress by House Speaker Paul Ryan, who has a two-decade long history of pushing open-borders immigration policies and whom Mulvaney voted for as House Speaker.