Over the weekend, Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona claimed that the wildfires raging through his state were caused by “illegal” immigrants who were looking to “signal others… keep warm and…divert law enforcement agents and agencies from them.”
It's unconscionable that Sen. McCain is using a devastating, emergency situation to score cheap political points in the immigration debate. Just a few years ago, he spoke so movingly and eloquently about the plight of the undocumented that it brought many of our Annual Conference attendees to tears. This is a man who knew and talked frequently about the sacrifice and dedication of Latinos in uniform and who made Latino audiences glow with pride about our community’s many heroes. Sen. McCain seemed to be the last best hope in his party to get bipartisan immigration reform enacted.
While his constituents are scrambling to save their homes, the one-time Republican presidential nominee seems to be most interested in using rhetoric that is, as NCLR's Clarissa Martínez De Castro told ABC News, “intended to demonize immigrants and to demonize Latinos.” Watch the ABC News story below:
After enduring much criticism from the Latino community, Sen. McCain told Ann Curry of NBC’s Today Show that he was not referring to the wildfires burning across Arizona. Instead, he says that he was only talking about the reports that immigrants have been known to set fires in the past. Watch him backpedal below, courtesy of the Political Correction project at Media Matters for America:
Whatever Sen. McCain believes he was talking about, the reality is that his comments are all the provocation that some people need in order to harm innocent people. Scapegoating an entire community for political gain is completely irresponsible and unbefitting a senator with as distinguished a career as John McCain.
It is painful to see the senator join in on the immigrant-bashing that has become priority number one for too many in his party. Many figured that McCain’s behavior was just an unprincipled but short-term episode designed to fuel his reelection campaign. They could not understand how a man who had previously deemed a border fence an expensive and ineffective boondoggle could now stand on the border saying “build the danged fence”; it just had to be an election year aberration. But with his fact-free and dangerous claim about the wildfires, it is now clear that his hatred is chronic.
In 2009, the Latino community grieved the loss of one of its greatest champions, Senator Ted Kennedy. Little did we know that we should have been also mourning the loss of another champion, Senator John McCain.