In the above video, Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) explains how America wound up with "the best and brightest immigrants" by comparing them to...bird dogs. See how easy it is to dehumanize outsiders and those who don't look like you?
You want a good bird dog, and you want one that's gonna be aggressive? Pick the one that's the friskiest, the one that's in games the most -- not the one that's over there sleeping in the corner. You want a pet to sit on the couch, pick the one that's sleeping in the corner. That's -- so, you get the pick of the litter, you got yourself a pretty good bird dog. We got the pick of every donor civilization on the planet because it's hard to get here, you had to be inspired to come. We got the vigor from the planet to come to America. Whichever generation it was, and then we taught our children that same thing.
This is the same guy who claims that not only is profiling important for combating illegal immigration, but he also claims to have a "sixth sense" when it comes to spotting illegal immigrants:
It's gotta be the shoes.
Then again, we all might just be taking all of this out of context, right?
This American vigor that we have that comes from legal immigrants who came to this country with a dream — we get the cream of the crop of every donor civilization on the planet — and people that can take a compliment and turn it into an insult are not going to be constructive working across the isle. But that’s what that was, was a compliment. And everyone who was there that heard that knows that.
Yeah, I'm sure he meant well.
Speaking of immigration, it's worth nothing that the legal immigrants who had the easiest time coming over have always been those who had the most money. It doesn't take just sheer moxie to come into this country the right way - it also helps if you have some coin to spread around.
