UT-4 Republican candidate Stephen Sandstrom

Sandstrom, a state representative is running in Utah’s newly-created 4th congressional district, made the remarks during an interview with ThinkProgress on Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, DC.

Despite endorsing Romney for president last July, Sandstrom had few kind words to offer the Massachusetts Republican on the subject of immigration. “I think we’re sticking our heads in the sand if we think that 12 million people are going to leave this country. They’re not,” insisted the Utah GOPer. He went on to say that if Republicans “keep ignoring the Hispanic population,” they will “relegate [them]selves to a minority party.”

SANDSTROM: Once we’ve done those two things, I think we can look at the people already here. I want to look at the people already here because I think we’re sticking our heads in the sand if we think that 12 million people are going to leave this country. They’re not.

KEYES: You think “self-deportation” is not really practical?

SANDSTROM: No, I don’t think self-deportation is practical. [...]

KEYES: Someone like Mitt Romney who is advocating this policy of self-deportation, has members like Kris Kobach on his campaign team. Do you think that’s going to send the wrong message nationally for Republicans?

SANDSTROM: I think the idea of self-deportation can happen in the extent that if you can’t qualify, if you’ve been a criminal element, we want you to leave and self-deport or go, but not for all 12 million. I think that’s where I differ slightly from Romney is that I think that’s not going to happen. I think that we need to look at a way to help the people that have not been criminals in this country or the people that were brought here at a young age to remain, because if we don’t do that, I think that’s one thing as a Republican Party, even as a conservative, we are going to relegate ourselves to a minority party if we keep ignoring the Hispanic population in this country and the Hispanic vote.

In his current position as state representative, Sandstrom has gained notoriety for championing a Utah immigration bill that many have compared to Arizona’s infamous SB 1070 legislation. Though the bill was defeated in the Utah House last week, 37-36, Sandstrom is still pushing to revive the measure.

Sandstrom is certainly no moderate on immigration, yet even he knows that Romney’s policy of “self-deportation” is laughable. Still, at least one Romney endorser is sticking by the presidential candidate’s immigration idea: Kansas Secretary of State and SB 1070 author Kris Kobach.

Kobach repeated his support for a self-deportation policy at a CPAC panel about immigration because it would serve as a jobs plan. To back up the claim, he said the immigration measures in Alabama and Arizona have helped the state economies. With 13 million Americans looking for jobs, Kobach said during the panel that deporting undocumented immigrants would open opportunities for those job seekers:

If it becomes our national policy we will accomplish many things, the restoration of the rule of law, and we will also create jobs for Americans all across America. [...] If you really want to create a job and you don’t want to use words like shovel-ready and do it through a gov program, here’s an idea for you: If you want to create a job for a U.S. citizen tomorrow, deport an illegal alien today.

Watch Kobach’s comments (the very last line):

Of course, if Kobach were actually paying attention to the effects of his pet laws, he’d realize this claim simply isn’t true. In Alabama, one report shows that the state could lose as many as 140,000 jobs because of the state’s immigration law. After Latinos fled new, harmful immigration policies in Alabama and Georgia, farmers watched their crops rot in the field because they did not have enough workers to harvest them. Businesses in Arizona eventually turned against SB 1070, the state’s extreme immigration policy, because of the negative impact it had on jobs and the recovering economy.

And economists have reached the consensus that immigrants are good for the economy and help create jobs. And in 2010, the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank released a study that conclusively found that “there is no evidence that these effects take place at the expense of jobs for workers born in the United States.” The study, which did not distinguish between legal and undocumented immigrants, found that immigrants in the workforce have a “significant positive effect in the long run.”

No matter how many times Kobach claims self-deportation will create jobs — or how long Romney embraces extremely anti-immigrant policies — reports have show that his claims are simply wrong.

Now U.S.-born children with undocumented immigrant parents even have been denied food stamps because of this portion of the anti-immigrant law. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reports that five people have called the group’s hotline to report that they were denied food stamps under the law because of their immigration status even though the benefits are for their American citizen children. SPLC President Richard Cohen said the civil rights group is considering suing the state over the denial of food stamps because of the “business transactions” portion in HB 56. Barry Spear, a spokesman for Alabama’s Department of Human Services, told Yahoo News that demanding proof of citizenship from the guardians of Americans who need food stamps is not the agency’s policy. “We are unaware of any violations of the policy,” Spear said.

But last month, Kansas changed its food aid program to deny benefits to children who are citizens if their parents are undocumented, removing more than 1,000 mixed families. “This policy not only hurts these families, it hurts us, too, especially because we’re talking about U.S. citizen children,” said Elena Morales, who works at El Center, an anti-poverty agency in Kansas City.

In the U.S., roughly 4.5 million American citizens under 18 years old have at least one undocumented parent, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. So while undocumented immigrants cannot access most welfare programs, their children are still able to access the programs as citizens. Policies like the one in Kansas and the interpretation of Alabama’s immigration law only serves to harm these American citizens who, through no fault of their own, happen to have undocumented parents.

And state Sen. Gerald Dial (R) agreed with the governor and attorney general and other legislators who called for changes to the law. “It’s just common sense. Let’s step up and say we’ve made some mistakes,” Dial said in November. Now he has filed a bill that proposes some of the broadest changes to HB 56 that, while far from perfect, would address some of the most harmful aspects of HB 56:

• Would Not Require Schools To Collect Data: Dial’s bill removes a provision that requires schools to collect data about the citizenship or legal resident status of newly enrolled students. Following the implementation of HB 56, schools reported a spike in absenteeism among Latino students because some current students feared that their parents could be deported if they were asked about their citizenship.
• Redefines “Business Transaction”: HB 56 includes a measure that prevents the state from entering into a “business transaction” with undocumented immigrants. Some public utility companies took this to mean that they could not provide service to anyone who cannot prove they are a citizen or legally in the United States. It effectively made it a felony for undocumented immigrants to take a bath in their own homes. Dial’s bill redefines “business transaction” more narrowly to include issues related to driver’s licenses or non-driver identification cards, license plates, or business licenses.

Dial’s bill also repeals a provision that would deny bail to undocumented immigrants, but he does not propose any changes to a section of the law that requires Alabama police officers “to ask for immigration papers from anyone they come in contact with who looks or sounds foreign.” The Supreme Court will hold a hearing this spring on SB 1070, Arizona’s extreme immigration law with the same “papers, please” requirement as Alabama’s law.

Fully repealing the state’s immigration law — Democrats have filed bills in the Alabama House and Senate to do just that –would be the best option for Alabama. But that option is unlikely while Republicans control the Alabama legislature along with a Republican governor. Nevertheless, Dial’s bills are an important admission that the state erred when enacted HB 56′s declaration of war on immigrants — the state should not hesitate one second before rolling back as much of the law as it can.

Rosa’s brother Hector, constantly scheming to line his own pockets, is played by Eugenio Derbez, one of Mexico’s pre-eminent comedians. His clowning doesn’t appeal to me, but Derbez is bringing a Univision-esque, south-of-the-border comedy style to U.S. television. In effect, he’s facilitating another kind of assimilation.

Many of Rob’s themes were first explored in Chico and the Man, which aired between 1974 and 1978 and was the first U.S. series set in a Mexican-American neighborhood. In that show, a charismatic young Chicano (Freddie Prinze) gradually won the affections of a crabby old white guy who didn’t hate Mexicans so much as he objected to the way changing demographics were shaking up his world. It’s a little depressing that nearly 40 years after Chico was first broadcast, we’re still stuck at the “first contact” stage in our depictions of the relationships between different communities, but at least television is once again paying attention to Latinos…On Modern Family and Glee, the Latino characters are cut off from their culture. On the former, there’s a discomfiting sense that the white Pritchett family rescued the Delgados from poverty (if we believe Gloria’s tales of her early life in Colombia) and bad parenting. (When Manny’s biological father, Javier, comes to visit, Jay always has to step in to save his stepson from disappointment.) The one time someone from Santana’s birth family appeared on Glee, it was a total downer: Her abuela broke her heart by kicking her out of the house after she came out. Wizards of Waverly Place sometimes explored Mexican traditions in a bicultural Italian-Mexican family—Alex celebrated her quinceañera, for example—but the kids’ more splashy heritage (as wizards, natch) tended to dominate. At least on Rob, the focus is on Mexican-American culture.

The question, though, is whether Rob is going to be the future of Latino comedy in America, or whether it’s backfill, making up for a dearth of representations that should have been there earlier and issues that should have been worked out on-screen long before this. The numbers are undeniably good overall, though as Joe Adalian points out, they’re not great among the coveted 18-34 year-old-viewers. Among them, the Rob does only slightly better than Parks and Recreation.

It’s probably worth noting that Parks and Recreation also has a half-Latina character in the form of April Ludgate. April’s fascinating precisely because she has an evolving relationship with her heritage. She’s annoyed by the idea that she’s supposed to be so lively and colorful.” But it’s not like she’s running away from her ethnic heritage. She tries on the idea of running away to Venezuela with Eduardo and she speaks Spanish particularly when she’s upset or tipsy. It’s interesting to contrast her to Gloria on Modern Family, who I think June is wrong to say is cut off from her culture—certainly, she’s constantly citing aphorisms, traditions, and superstitions, though most of them are clearly exaggerated and made up. But unlike April, we don’t necessarily see Gloria negotiating her identity now that she and Manny are in a new setting: Gloria and Manny’s heritage is a source of punchlines more than it is a source of plot or character developments. In other words, while on Rob, the identity conflicts are between multiple characters, on Parks and Recreation, that’s a negotiation process that’s going on within a single character. First contact between whites and Latinos is the past: figuring out how Latinos and elements of Latino culture are going to fit into both individuals’ lives and American culture as a whole is the future.

Mitt Romney seen with former California Gov. Pete Wilson during Meg Whitman's failed 2010 gubernatorial campaign.

Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, called the announcement “baffling,” citing the widespread perception that Wilson’s involvement in Meg Whitman’s 2010 California gubernatorial campaign contributed to her loss — including a stunning 86 percent to 13 percent landslide in favor of Gov. Jerry Brown among Latinos.

Others had sharper words, citing the long list of anti-immigrant politicians already signed up for Romney’s campaign, including Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the author of the Arizona and Alabama anti-immigrant laws.  ”Romney can’t seem to stop himself from digging deeper and deeper into his hole with Latino voters,” said Eliseo Medina of the Service Employees International Union in a statement reported by the Los Angeles Times. “Here is what Pete Wilson accomplished: He turned Latino voters against the GOP brand.”

It turns out that Romney’s history with Pete Wilson is longer than some likely realize.  Archival news reports accessed on Lexis-Nexis indicate that Mitt Romney attended at least one high-dollar fundraiser to help retire debt from Wilson’s 1994 gubernatorial campaign, one of the most bitterly anti-immigrant campaigns in recent memory.  From a March 29, 1995 article in the Boston Herald:

Wilson later arrived in Boston, where an early evening fund-raiser sponsored by Gov. William F. Weld netted about $110,000 to help pay off the California governor’s 1994 re-election debt.[...]

About a dozen big-dollar contributors, including 1994 GOP Senate nominee Mitt Romney, gathered in the Four Seasons apartment of Weld supporter Thomas Shields to dine on a buffet supper and meet the man Weld said “may very well be” the next president.

While Wilson was at the time preparing for what would be an abortive 1996 presidential run, the fundraiser Romney attended was to retire debt from Wilson’s 1994 campaign, one which Wilson waged based on an outright demonization of illegal immigrants in an effort to boost his previously floundering re-election bid and ensure the passage of Proposition 187, an extreme anti-immigrant ballot measure.

Watch a collection of anti-immigrant/pro-Proposition 187 ads, including the infamous “They Keep Coming” ad, from Wilson’s 1994 campaign:

Proposition 187, which ultimately passed by an overwhelming 59 percent to 41 percent margin, was in many ways a precursor to today’s extreme anti-immigrant laws, including those in Alabama and Arizona authored by Romney adviser Kris Kobach.  Its major provisions are very similar to or even more extreme than those Republicans have passed in recent years:

• Barred undocumented immigrants from the state’s education system: K-12 through higher education.  Schools would also be forced to verify the legal status of not only students, but also their parents.
• Barred undocumented immigrants from receiving care at any publicly-funded health care facility.
• Barred undocumented immigrants from receiving cash assistance and other public social services in the state.
• Required all service providers to report suspected undocumented immigrants to the California Attorney General’s office and Immigration and Naturalization Service (now called Immigration and Customs Enforcement).
• Required police officers to determine the legal status of all persons who were arrested and report those suspected of being undocumented to federal authorities.
• Made the production, distribution and use of false documents felony offenses.
• Made reports on an individual’s status to the attorney general available to any other government entity.
• Prohibited local governments from limiting or failing to implement its provisions in any way.

After a lengthy court battle, Proposition 187 was ultimately declared unconstitutional in 1997 and finally killed by the administration of Governor Gray Davis (D) in 1999.

It’s unclear if Romney ever took a public position on Proposition 187 in 1994; however, any objections he may have had to the virulently anti-immigrant campaign run by Wilson did not stop him from helping to retire the campaign’s debt in early 1995 or from appointing Wilson to a prominent position in his 2012 campaign.

That idea — which forms the basis of the radical anti-immigration laws in Arizona and Alabama — is inspired by the work of Kris Kobach, Kansas’ Secretary of State. Kobach, who advises Romney on immigration, explained the “self-deporation” concept in an interview with ThinkProgress recently, calling it “attrition through enforcement.”

In an interview with Univision’s Jorge Ramos, John McCain — who has endorsed Romney — distanced himself from the former Massachusetts governor’s rhetoric. “We have to present a humane approach to a very difficult issue of illegal immigration into this country,” McCain said, adding that he favors a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants. Ramos forced McCain to concede that he did not agree with the policy of self-deporation:

RAMOS: You’re talking about a humane way. Is self-deportation a humane way to treat 11 million undocumented immigrants?

McCAIN: No. I think there are some people who want to leave this country and return to the country they came from, but obviously it requires a broader solution than that, and we all know that.

Watch it:

Romney and Kobach’s radicalism is alienating allies in the Republican Party — even those who have endorsed Romney. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), who supports Romney, said self-deportation “was frankly a bad choice of words.” Alex Garza, the vice president of Hispanics in Politics — and a Republican — said “the Republican Party shouldn’t promote policies of family separation. Self-deportation isn’t possible.”

Newt Gingrich also assailed Romney, saying “I think he’s amazingly insensitive to the realities of the immigrant community — his whole concept of self-deportation. I’ve not met anyone who thinks it’s in touch with reality. People aren’t going to self-deport.”

For the last two years, many of the dining hall workers had been organizing to form a union, but the efforts stalled amid negotiations with the administration. Many on campus believe that the administration began looking into the employees’ work authorizations as a way to thwart the union effort [...]

“We were here for a very long time and there was never a complaint,” said Christian Torres, 25, a cook who had worked at the college for six years. “But now all of the sudden we were suspect, and they didn’t want us to work here anymore.”

College President David W. Oxtoby has denied charges that the investigation into the legal status of dining hall employees was a form of union busting. If he’s not telling the truth, however, a decision by the pro-corporate Supreme Court makes it unlikely that Pomona will be held accountable — despite the fact that it is illegal to retaliate against workers seeking to form a union. A 2002 Supreme Court decision drastically reduced the consequences for companies that violate national labor laws in ways that impact immigrant workers, leaving millions of workers without a safe guard against exploitative employers.

The decision at Pomona College has sparked plenty of criticism and debate on the small, liberal arts campus known for its progressive ideals and quality education. Students and alumni are pushing back against the administration’s decision, and are questioning the real motives behind the firings.

And as the Romney campaign swept from South Carolina, where state officials are defending a harmful immigration law, into Florida and onto Nevada, which have larger Latino communities, Kobach insisted in an interview that Romney has not changed his tone on immigration policy:

No, he’s been very clear that he favors attrition through enforcement and is opposed to amnesty. [...] To say that one talks about his position in favor of legal immigration…one can call it a change in tone, but it’s not in any way different with what he said about addressing illegal immigration.

“Enforcement through attrition” has the same result as self-deportation, Kobach said, and is one of the goals of the extreme state laws. And as it turns out, the backbone for Romney’s immigration policy — forcing immigrants to “self-deport” — began as a joke.

Hispanics for Wilson (HFW) will support their candidate through various efforts, including:

• the creation of “Self Deportation Centers” which will encourage all Hispanics regardless of citizenship status, especially their elderly relatives, to return to their countries of origin. The whole membership of Hispanics For Wilson promises to voluntarily leave the country when Governor Wilson wins the fall election.
• a pledge to retrain white collar workers and middle management in the agricultural, restaurant and hotel maintenance arts, once illegal immigrants are displaced from these highly sought after fields. . . .
• calling for the immediate deportation of singer Linda Rondstadt for attracting Mexicans to this country with her garbled Spanish yodeling.
• a promise to never utter a word of Spanish, except for “Adios, amigo.” In the case that they don’t know how to speak Spanish, they vow to speed-learn it and then quickly forget it, in the interest of racial harmony.

There’s no word yet whether Romney shares Alcaraz and Zul’s bold anti-Rondstadt stance.

The facts are not on Kobach’s side, however. Numerous studies and reports have shown the economic harm from HB 56, Alabama’s anti-immigrant law. Farmers are losing their crops or not planting as much because they don’t have workers, and even the state’s own governor has said that the state’s dropping unemployment rate cannot be pegged on the immigration law.

In the fall, preliminary research from the Center for Business and Economic Research showed that, conservatively, HB 56 could cost the state $40 million. Now that the researcher behind that original estimate has had more time to study the law’s full impact, however, he concludes that this initial estimate is far too low. According to a new study, Alabama’s law will cost the state up to 140,000 direct and indirect jobs. And state GDP losses could total $2.3 to $10.8 billion and reduce local sales taxes by $20.0 to $93.1 million.

One key problem is any benefit for businesses from the exodus of immigrants is counteracted by the loss of demand. And the report points out that clearly legal residents are not filling all the jobs left behind:

It is generally accepted that unauthorized immigrants work for low wages. As such, the absence of illegal immigrants is likely to improve competitiveness for businesses that found it extremely difficult to compete because they do not use such labor. This might make the business climate attractive for out-of-state businesses that do not use illegal immigrant labor to consider relocating to the state. Such benefits for some businesses do not translate into a benefit for the aggregate economy because they cannot fully make up for the reduced demand caused by the absence of unauthorized immigrant workers.

It is also argued that illegal immigrants take jobs that should have gone to citizens and other legal residents. If that were true, farmers and businesses that employed these workers and other business interests as well should not have complained about the law especially given the state’s high unemployment rate. There was very little worker substitution and most of the few that considered the jobs previously performed by unauthorized immigrant workers did not have the requisite skills and productivity. With a focus on preparing the workforce for high-skill, high-wage and fast-growing jobs, it is unreasonable to expect people to flock to lower wage jobs that are performed under tough conditions.

Backers of Alabama’s law and similar versions in Arizona, South Carolina, and Georgia will continue to argue that making conditions horrible for undocumented immigrants so that they, in Mitt Romney‘s words, “self-deport,” will be a boon for the economy. But as reports tally the economic damage in Alabama, these supporters are only burying their heads in the sand to avoid the economic ruin that follows in these anti-immigrant laws’ wake.

Jesus Navarro wears a surgical mask to prevent infection while undergoing dialysis treatments.

For eight years, Navarro has used a home dialysis machine to cleanse his blood after his kidneys began to fail. He reached the top of the waitlist for a kidney in the spring, but doctors called off his transplant when they discovered his immigration status. Even after his wife offered her kidney for the transplant, administrators still refused to allow the surgery. Reece Fawley, executive director of transplantation at UC San Francisco, said in a statement that the hospital considers socioeconomic stability for all patients, including immigration status.

Navarro’s situation highlights a dilemma for hospitals when it comes to organ transplants for immigrants, especially if their undocumented status threatens their continued access to insurance:

Though no data are available, anecdotal evidence suggests clinics sometimes perform organ transplants on illegal immigrants, especially when the patients are young. In one high-profile case, UCLA Medical Center gave an undocumented woman three liver transplants before she turned 21.

But health administrators also reject patients because of their immigration status, though that usually happens when the patients lack insurance. Bellevue Hospital in New York attracted attention last year when it refused to transplant a kidney between brothers because they could not pay for the operation. [...]

Some bioethicists say the hospital should have performed the surgery because Navarro would not be taking resources away from other patients or putting his wife at serious risk.

After all, many legal residents fail to follow their post-surgical plan.

Some lawmakers would even want hospitals to check the immigration status for all patients. The Arizona legislature considered a bill that would require that, and Rep. Steve King (R-IA) said in November that it would not be going “too far” to have hospitals ask patients about their immigration status.

But in the meantime, Navarro’s private insurance from his job would cover the transplant and follow-up care, but he lost job last month after an immigration audit and his insurance could run out. If he is unable to extend his insurance and ends up in California’s Medi-Cal program, his problem would worsen because Medi-Cal would not cover the immunosuppressive drugs that prevent organ rejection after a transplant. “We don’t know what to do,” his wife said. “It’s like we’re on a ledge — we can’t go here or there.”

But rather than follow Arizona’s model and run undocumented immigrants out of the state, Kansas Agriculture Secretary Dale Rodman is seeking a waiver from the federal government so that companies can hire undocumented workers.

According to the Topeka Capital-Journal, Rodman’s goal is “to create a legal, straightforward manner of organizing existing immigrant labor.” He has met with the Department of Homeland Security several times about creating a pilot program to connect employers with undocumented workers through a state-organized network. “I need a waiver,” Rodman told the Associated Press. “It would be good for Kansas agriculture.” Now, details are expected to come out this week about a bill that would create Rodman’s idea of a state-managed worker program:

Mike Beam, senior vice president of the Kansas Livestock Association, said the objective was to secure a reliable, regulated labor pool to the state’s businesses. Despite the recession, there are counties in rural Kansas with unemployment rates half the state average. [...]

Sen. Mark Taddiken, a Clifton Republican and chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said the state’s labor force needed to be solid to allow agricultural production to expand.

“They’re having trouble finding people,” Taddiken said. “The agricultural sector is looking for reliability.”

Rodman said he would not promote the bill and instead continue to focus on working with the Department of Homeland Security, which has so far neither approved or rejected the idea. And similar to Kansas’ plan, a lawmaker in New Mexico also proposed a state guest worker program in that state to handle the issue of undocumented workers.

But supporters of the law thought they had found a silver lining; after only a month, they claimed the immigration law was already causing the state’s unemployment rate to drop. And as the rate has continued to drop a little each month since portions of the law, officials and right-wing media have perpetuated the myth that HB 56 has caused the declining unemployment rate. After three months of declines, the bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Scott Beason finally chimed in last week to celebrate the specious connection:

“Since the anti-illegal immigration law went into effect, Alabama has seen a tremendous drop in unemployment. A drop that far outpaces the other states in the region,” said Alabama State Senator Scott Beason. ”In three months Alabama has dropped 1.7 points to a level below the national average.” [...]

“I promised that the anti-illegal immigration law would open up thousands of jobs for Alabamians, and it has done that. People are going back to work.

“The critics may whine, but many of our neighbors have jobs again. I know those folks are thankful for the opportunity to work and support their families, and that opportunity was opened up by HB-56.”

Beason ignores the fact that even Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley (R), who signed the immigration bill into law, has admitted there is no data to back up the connection. And instead of opening up jobs, businesses have seen jobs lost because of HB 56. At least one jobs recruiter in the state has said the state may actually be driving away foreign companies looking to build new plants because of the immigration law.

Taking a closer look at the numbers shows that, as the unemployment rate dropped from 9.8 percent in September down to 8.1 percent in December, the workforce has also shrunk, rather than adding more jobs. For example, in October 3,578 Alabamians gained jobs, while 6,258 either died, left the state, or stopped looking for employment. And between December 2011 and November 2011, the civilian workforce in Alabama dropped from 2,145,259 people in November to 2,131,994 in December.

Beason and others who raise up Alabama’s immigration law as a job-creating measure are relying on a sleight of hand to hide the true harm behind the measure.

Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam

Responding to a question about whether states should be able to enforce those laws, Putnam replied:

PUTNAM: Florida flirted with it last year, but thank goodness didn’t do it, because it would have been devastating to our state, to our reputation, to our economy. The issue is that under the Constitution, there’s a really narrow bandwidth of options for states to deal with immigration. … [T]hey’re focusing on the enforcement piece, and have had really devastating effects on their economy. Georgia’s got a labor report out, Alabama’s got a labor report out, that has been very harmful to their economy. Because in swinging wildly out of frustration that Washington hasn’t done something, they’ve passed bills that are causing their businesses and their economies great harm. They’ve seen an evacuation of workers. … It has give us a real world, real time example of what happens when you get these state-based polices wrong.

Watch it: