Former President Barack Obama resorted to the usual Democratic ploy of frivolously playing the race card in an attempt to discredit the GOP’s criticism of unfettered illegal immigration.
Obama made the remarks Sunday during a question-and-answer session in San Diego at the L’Attitude conference, an event for Latino business professionals.
“Right now, the biggest fuel behind the Republican agenda is related to immigration and the fear that somehow America’s character is going to be changed if people of darker shades, there are too many of them here,” he said, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune.
Obama then claimed conservative media outlets and Republican politicians fearmonger by invoking a conspiracy theory about the replacement of white Americans by racial minorities.
“You hear it on hard-right media. You hear it from candidates and politicians,” he said. “You hear things like ‘Great Replacement Theory.’ I mean, this is not subtle. Unless we’re able to return to a more inclusive vision inside the Republican Party, it’s going to be hard to get a bill done.”
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In fact, the Great Replacement Theory was an idea introduced by a Democrat: Theodore Bilbo, a former governor of Mississippi who later served as a U.S. senator.
In his 1947 book, “Take Your Choice: Separation or Mongrelization,” Bilbo warned that Western civilizations such as the United States would be destroyed by the mass dilution and replacement of their white-majority populations.
Predictably, Democrats and their corporate media minions flipped the script by aggressively trying to link the Great Replacement Theory to Republicans.
Obama did exactly that at the L’Attitude conference by suggesting that opposing mass illegal immigration is racist.
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“When you have that kind of rhetoric floating around out there, we’ve seen in history that is dangerous rhetoric,” he said, according to the Union-Tribune.
“It’s dangerous wherever it appears and it’s dangerous here in the United States. It’s not part of what’s best in us,” the former president said. “It’s not part of what makes this country exceptional.”
He urged greater Hispanic participation in elections, saying they would flip the red state of Texas if they voted in large numbers.
“If Latinos in Texas voted at the same rate as Latinos in Colorado, Texas would be a blue state,” Obama gushed.
His cavalier weaponization of the race card to downplay the dangers of mass illegal immigration is tiresome in its banality.
It is not racist to want — and expect — foreigners to respect longstanding immigration laws that both Democrats and Republicans enacted in Congress.
However, it is racist to assume (as Obama did) that Hispanics are monolithic and they all support illegal immigration.
In fact, many Latinos oppose it.
MSNBC reporter surprised to find Hispanics that support Republicans and oppose illegal immigration pic.twitter.com/RUY5j7k28k
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) October 30, 2018
According to an April 2021 Pew poll, 44 percent of Hispanics surveyed said “illegal immigration is a very big problem in the country today.”
If Obama were so enthusiastic about illegal immigration, he could have tried to pass a law during his two terms as president to legalize all immigration into the United States. But he didn’t.
In fact, he underscored the need for strong borders earlier in his political career. Using his current reasoning, Obama was being racist.
“We all agree on the need to better secure the border and to punish employers who choose to hire illegal immigrants,” the then-senator said in December 2005.
“You know, we are a generous and welcoming people here in the United States, but those who enter the country illegally and those who employ them disrespect the rule of law, and they are showing disregard for those who are following the law,” he said.
While arguing against illegal immigration, Obama said it was unfair to the numerous people who were waiting their turns in line to enter the United States legally.
“We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently and lawfully to become immigrants in this country,” he said.
“So, that’s why we need to start by giving agencies charged with border security new technology, new facilities and more people to stop, process and deport illegal immigrants.”
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Obama reaffirmed his stance against illegal immigration as president.
“Ultimately, our nation — like all nations — has the right and obligation to control its borders and set laws for residency and citizenship,” he said in a July 1, 2010, speech. “And no matter how decent they are, no matter their reasons, the 11 million who broke these laws should be held accountable.”
Twelve short years later, Obama might describe that as “dangerous rhetoric.”
