UPDATE: Arizona GOP leader asks state lawmaker to resign over immigration comments
PHOENIX β A first-term Prescott lawmaker is warning that immigration βrepresents an existential threat to the United Statesβ and needs to be curtailed before the country is irrevocably altered.
Republican state Rep. David Stringer said that new immigrants β especially those from non-European countries β do not assimilate as easily as those who came a century earlier.
And Stringer said the rapid influx of Hispanic children has made school integration impossible because βthere arenβt enough white kids to go around,β not only because of the pure numbers of immigrants but because Anglo parents choose to either move to new areas or simply put their children in private or charter schools.
Stringerβs comments Wednesday to Capitol Media Services came after nearly a minute of his 17-minute speech he made Monday to the Republican Menβs Forum in Prescott were posted on Facebook. He said the comments on immigration, at the end of his discussion of criminal-justice reform, were βtaken out of context and distorted by omission.β
But Stringer, first elected to the Legislature in 2016, acknowledged his remarks were prepared and that his words were meant to be a warning of sorts to his audience which was largely, if not exclusively Anglo, that the country they know is changing.
βIβm telling them, βYou need to be prepared for this,ββ he said.
And Stringer told Capitol Media Services he does believe that unless immigration is slowed β and significantly β there will be problems for the United States.
βBefore we bring in a lot of new immigrants, we need to figure out how we assimilate the folks that are here,β he said. βAnd maybe we have reached the point where we need a little breathing room now, we need a little time to assimilate.β
He said there are βpolitical implications of massive demographic change and displacement.β
βRemember now: In the United States, people are moving all over the place,β Stringer said.
βItβs almost like βwhite flightβ that it constitutes an existential threat to the United States,β he explained. βI think we could be facing national dissolution in a decade or two if we donβt get control of the immigration issue.β
It starts, he said, with integration. Stringer said that requirement, which has its roots in the historic 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education.
βThe whole concept of integration is giving minority kids who are typically in worse neighborhoods, not as good a school, the same kind of advantages that white kids have,β Stringer said. βSo you integrate them with the white schools and you get a better, more fair result.β
But Stringer said that is becoming increasingly difficult in a state where he said the βminorityβ population makes up 60 percent of public schools.
βThereβs not enough white kids to integrate all these schools because weβve had so much immigration over a short period of time,β he said, leading to βa dramatic demographic transformation.β
But the issue, Stringer said, is deeper than just education.
βYou canβt simply have amnesty after amnesty and not control your borders and continue to remain a viable, unified country,β he said. βThatβs what I think.β
Stringer said while βAmerican has been a melting pot,β whatβs happening now is different.
βItβs been a melting pot for people of European descent,β he said.
βSo if youβre a Swede, a Norwegian, an Irishman and a Frenchman, after the second or third generation, your kids are all alike,β Stringer explained.
βThey donβt have any accents. Theyβre indistinguishable.β
Thatβs not true of Hispanics, he said
βTalk to Asians,β he said. βEven though theyβre affluent, theyβre an educated, cultured group, they still have a sense of maybe not fully participating in American life.β
And Stringer said even African-Americans who have been here for hundreds of years βstill have not been fully assimilated into American culture.β
And thereβs something else about immigrants from Mexico and points south.
βThey go back and forth,β Stringer said. βThey have their connections with their family, their connections with their culture, their language, their connections with their country are stronger than when you came over from Russia or you came over from the Ukraine or you came over from Italy or wherever, you were crossing a sea and you didnβt have these lines of connections.β