Former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO)

Over his five terms in Congress, his single-issue anti-immigrant White House bid, and various other political campaigns, Tancredo has earned a reputation as one of America’s most extreme nativist politicians. Among his career highlights:

1. Proposed that the U.S. bomb Mecca. In 2007, Tancredo suggested that as a “deterent” to terrorism, “If it is up to me, we are going to explain that an attack on this homeland of that nature would be followed by an attack on the holy sites in Mecca and Medina.” Despite widespread criticism of the comments, he reiterated the view during his 2010 campaign: “I think is quite defensible. I still do, and I still would say it. It is just that I would have absolutely no reason to say it as the governor of the state of Colorado.”

2. Called for impeachment of President Obama because people illegally immigrate. In an error-riddled 2010 Washington Times op-ed, Tancredo wrote that President Obama was “a more serious threat to America than al Qaeda.” Citing a false claim by then-Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), he added, “Mr. Obama’s most egregious and brazen betrayal of our Constitution was his statement to Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican, that the administration will not enforce security on our southern border because that would remove Republicans’ desire to negotiate a ‘comprehensive’ immigration bill. That is, to put it plainly, a decision that by any reasonable standard constitutes an impeachable offense against the Constitution.”

3. Smeared the first Hispanic-American Supreme Court Justice as a “racist.” When President Obama nominated Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Tancredo went ballistic. Calling her “Sonia Mayor,” he said, “I do not know if he has a hatred for white people. I can say that [Obama's] statements and his appointment of someone I do believe to be a racist, ‘Sonia Mayer,’ for her racial views by the way — that is an indication.” He added “I’m telling you she appears to be a racist. She said things that are racist in any other context. That’s exactly how we would portray it and there’s no one who would get on the Supreme Court saying a thing like that except for a Hispanic woman and you’re going to say it doesn’t matter!” ”Why is it, in order to speak to [Hispanics], you have to speak to them in Spanish, or you have to be translated to them in Spanish?” Tancredo said on CNN. “If you are going to vote in this country, you should be a citizen. To be a citzen in this country you should know English.”

4. Does not believe candidates in the USA should speak Spanish. As he boycotted a December 2007 presidential debate on Univision, Tancredo wrote in a press release, “It is the law that to become a naturalized citizen of this country you must have knowledge and understanding of English, including a basic ability to read, write, and speak the language… So what may I ask are our presidential candidates doing participating in a Spanish speaking debate? Pandering comes to mind.” Embracing assimilation, he added, “Bilingualism is a great asset for any individual but it has perilous consequences for a nation. As such, a Spanish debate has no place in a presidential campaign.” On CNN, he elaborated, “If you are going to vote in this country, you should be a citizen. To be a citizen in this country you should know English.”

5. Demonized illegal immigrants as violent gangsters and “jihadist” terrorists. In campaign ad for his 2008 presidential run, he showed bloody images of terrorist attacks, warning that open borders means “[Islamic] jihadists who froth with hate” will launch terrorist attacks like those in London, Spain, and Russia and “vicious central American gangs” who are “pushing drugs, raping kids, [and] destroying lives.” In 2004, he warned that some undocumented immigrants are “coming here to kill you and to kill me and our families.”

6. Bashed Miami for its diversity. In a 2009 interview, Tancredo said Miami does not feel like America because so many people there speak Spanish: ‘”Look at what has happened to Miami. It has become a Third World country. You just pick it up and take it and move it someplace. You would never know you’re in the United States of America. You would certainly say you’re in a Third World country.” When criticized for the remarks, he shot back, “I knew speaking your mind could be dangerous in Havana. I guess it’s equally dangerous to do so in Miami. Apparently, there isn’t much of a difference between the two anymore.”

7. Even opposed legal immigration. In 2003, Tancredo proposed the “Mass Immigration Reduction Act.” The bill would have put a five-year moratorium on all legal immigration to the United States.

8. Wants to reinstate literacy tests for voting. Tancredo proposed a “civics literacy test” to prevent non-English speakers from voting. Lamenting that President Obama won with the support of what he called “people who could not even spell the word ‘vote,’ or say it in English,” he blamed the election of a “committed socialist ideologue” on the fact that “we do not have a civics literacy test before people can vote in this country.”

As the national Republican party seeks to shed its reputation as anti-immigrant, Tancredo’s candidacy presents an interesting challenge. Former House Republican Leader Dick Armey (R-TX), an influential figure in the Tea Party movement, once called his former colleague a “cheerleader of jerkiness in the immigration debate.”

Rep. Steve King (R-IA)

When the proposal was first introduced in 2007, then-Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA) enlisted 104 co-sponsors — 102 of them Republicans. His 2009 version attracted 95 co-sponsors. After Deal’s election to the Georgia governorship, King took over as chief sponsor in 2011 and got 90 Republican co-sponsors. Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) introduced a Senate version with four GOP co-sponsors.

But with Republicans pursuing immigration reform in the aftermath of the presidential election, the measure has experienced a significant decline in support. Just two Senators have co-sponsored Vitter’s 2013 Senate bill. And Rep. King’s House version has just 24 co-sponsors to date — all Republicans.

Only a small amount of the drop-off can be attributed to turnover: 16 co-sponsors from the 112th Congress either lost re-election or retired and just one freshman (Michigan’s Kerry Bentivolio) has signed on thus far. And while it is only four months into the 113th Congress, more than two-thirds of the eventual House co-sponsors had already signed on at this point two years ago.

The 51 House incumbents who co-sponsored the bill in the last Congress but have not done so this year include a wide range of Republicans, including Members from swing districts won by President Obama (Reps. Gary Miller of California, Mike Coffman of Colorado, and John Kline of Minnesota) and the nation’s most rock-ribbed Republican districts (Reps. Spencer Bauchus and Robert Aderholt of Alabama and Reps. Ralph Hall and Kevin Brady of Texas). Rand Paul (R-KY) and Jerry Moran (R-KS) have (so far) dropped from the ranks of the Senate co-sponsors.
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The restrictionist Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) is at it again, with a new paper claiming that immigrants lower the wages of low-skilled native workers. But don’t be fooled: The study is a round-up of old research re-packaged as new, and misses the overall point that immigration reform is a net positive for the economy.

The report, from Harvard Economist and immigration skeptic George Borjas, argues that while immigrant workers add to the U.S. economy, they do so by lowering the wages of native workers, particularly low-wage workers. But this is only one school of thought, and as our colleagues David Madland and Nick Bunker have argued, far more research and researchers (for example Heidi Sheirholz, Gianmarco Ottaviano and Giovanni Peri, Adriana Kugler and Mutlu Yuskel, Giovanni Peri, and David Card,) have actually shown that the opposite is true: Immigrants have a small, but positive affect on the wages of native-workers, and in some cases lead to native workers entering higher-skilled jobs. And even Borjas concludes that the economic benefits to the native born from immigration are “equal to $35 billion a year — or about 0.2 percent of the total GDP in the United States.”

More importantly, Borjas and CIS are attempting a classic misdirection. They are trying to apply an analysis of increases in the labor supply to the current debate, while ignoring the fact that the actual debate on immigration reform is about providing legal status and citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants. These immigrants are already here, and already working alongside their native colleagues in the labor force. Legal status and citizenship will not be a shock to the labor supply, and CIS’s claims of immigration leading to lower wages for native workers simply would not happen. In fact providing legal status and citizenship within 5 years would increase the wages the undocumented, and consequently raise the wages of all Americans by $618 Billion over a decade.

Borjas also does not take into account the fact that the higher wages from immigration reform increases the size of the American economy, creates more demand for goods and services, and leads to more business and job creation, benefits that accrue to all Americans. Providing legal status and citizenship within 5 years would add an estimated $1.1 trillion to the cumulative U.S. GDP over a decade, and an average increase of 159,000 new jobs per year. Immigration reform would also bring in more immigrants in the future, which economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin of the conservative American Action Forum has found would increase per capita GPD, and reduce the federal deficit.

It’s no wonder that conservative groups like Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform have rejected attempts to downplay the economic effects of immigration reform. Put simply, immigration reform is good for the economy.

Philip E Wolgin is a Senior Policy Analyst on the CAP Immigration Policy team and Patrick Oakford is a Research Assistant on the Economic Policy team.