Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), who was among those arrested over the weekend at the immigration protests in front of the White House, debated Arizona’s immigration law yesterday with Arizona Senate candidate J.D. Hayworth (R).
Though Hayworth argued that the law is not racist, and “we call things racism just to get attention,” Gutierrez was emphatic: “The law is discriminatory.”
Gutierrez, an outspoken advocate for immigration reform, and Hayworth, who has said that he thinks Arizona’s controversial immigration bill is “drawn too narrowly,” both appeared on CBS’s Face The Nation yesterday.
Gutierrez began by saying that “J.D. Hayworth wants to say, ‘if we just pass these laws they’re going to go away,'” but illegal immigrants “have roots in the community.”
He continued: “So what I say is make them learn English, make them pay a fine, make them pay into our system, and then put them on the track” to citizenship.
Hayworth argued that “there is a huge criminal component” among the people coming across the border, and that “border security is national security.”
He added: “And it’s not only illegals coming north from Mexico. We’ve been getting Chinese, we’ve been getting people from the Middle East.”
“For Luis to suggest that somehow we need to forgive people coming into the country illegally, that’s the root of the problem,” said Hayworth.
Gutierrez pointed out that the United States has increased border security over the years, but “it’s not working.” He added that he agrees with Hayworth that the number of criminals crossing the border is a problem, but that not all immigrants are criminals:
We’ve come here to sweat and to toil and to work hard. Yes, some of us crossed that border, some of us overstayed our visa, but by and large, we love this country.
“And to say that we are somehow all this criminal element, and to target us with this discriminatory law, is just wrong,” said Gutierrez.
Hayworth also said that he doesn’t think the law is racist, but “we call things racism just to get attention.” Calling the law racist, he said, is “a deliberate distortion to move this from a question of enforcement to a question of ethnicity.”
“The law is discriminatory,” Gutierrez replied.
Watch Gutierrez get arrested at Saturday’s protest:
