Profiles in Immigration: Jeff Sessions

Jeff Sessions is on the shortlist of people who are fighting the national wing of the Republican Party’s agenda to rebrand itself amongst Latinos effectively enough to completely end the momentum they’ve built since November.  Coming off the gun debate after being the party that filibustered background checks with roughly 86% approval that may have helped prevent the Boston bomber from outgunning police, the Virginia Tech shooting, the straw purchases used in high profile murders of officials in Texas… Republicans know they’re hurting: Max Baucus (D-MT), one of the few Democrats to vote against background checks from a conservative state, decided not to run after seeing how badly his constituency reacted to his vote.  Immigration will very likely be the last chance that Congress has to redeem itself in a meaningful way going into the 2014 elections, and Jeff Sessions is hell bent on making sure the GOP brand is as offensive as possible to Latino voters.

In his offensive against immigration, Sessions has gone biblical: “[there is no scriptural basis] for the idea that a modern nation state can’t have a lawful system of immigration” stated Sessions.  He referred to a story in which the King of Edom denied the Israelites the right to pass through his land as evidence God supports a border fence.  In the books which Sessions refers to, the Israelites were the good guys, often forced to immigrate from nation to nation in search of their own homeland.

This statement was in response to Dr. David Fleming of the Champion Forest Baptist Church citing Leviticus 19:33-34, calling on believers to treat foreigners “as the native among you.”  Sessions then said Fleming was “leading little ones astray” by citing the bible “loosely.”  In this opinion, however, Sessions is increasingly alone as religious organizations are increasingly coming out for immigration.

Being anti-immigration is nothing new for Sessions: for the shortlist, he led the effort in the senate to defeat “amnesty” bills (according to his 2008 Senate campaign website); voted no on federal funding for “sanctuary cities”; voted no on comprehensive immigration reform; voted yes on English as the official language of US; voted yes on building a border fence; voted no on establishing a guest worker program; voted no on giving guest workers a path to citizenship; is rated 100% by the anti-immigration US Border Control, indicating a sealed-border stance; introduced a bill for zero tolerance for border crossing and increased prosecution and co-sponsored a bill requiting government services be in English only.  While this is all safe for him and the sort of thing he may, it is an increasingly sever liability for anyone with an R next to their name and Latino constituents.

As Alabama struggles with race relations today after passing HB 56 (essentially Alabama’s SB 1070) and Shelby County, AL challenging the Voting Rights Act, one of it’s Senators is digging his heels in against immigration.  Immigration has been called the civil rights struggle of our time by John Lewis, who barely survived having his skull fractured by police while peacefully marching for voting rights on a bridge in Selma, Alabama in the 60′s.  This was what shocked President Johnson into action, and soon we had that Voting Rights Act which is before the Supreme Court.

Alabama is one of the most conservative states in the country: Republicans win no matter what in the Senate, however, Jeff Sessions won’t necessarily win his primary.  In a state with only 4% Latinos, he has little incentive to leave himself open to attacks from the right on immigration from potential opponents.

As more moderate “rising stars” within the party like Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan line up behind immigration reform, Jeff Sessions stands with politicians like Ted Cruz and Chuck Grassley who are taking positions that will ensure they have little national appeal.  As two factions emerge within the Republican Party around Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz on immigration, it is clear that Rubio has learned much more from the 2012 election: hoping Latinos won’t come out to vote didn’t work then.

While 2012 was a Presidential election year and encourages higher voter turnout, Republicans have more at stake this time around, and have made themselves look terrible during the gun debate to even the Republican primary crowd: they aren’t ALL the 6% against background checks.  While it may or may not be the last chance Republicans get to rebrand themselves in general, immigration will be their last shot at redeeming themselves with Latino voters going into 2014.  Sessions and his bible speak aren’t helping.