Berman Bills Dying In Committee

Rep. Leo Berman (R-Tyler) seems to have a bug up his butt about immigration. The racist Republican right-winger has re-introduced some bills in this session of the Texas legislature that he couldn't even get out of committee in the last session.

He introduced bills that would make English the official language of Texas, would deny citizenship to children born in the United States if their parents were citizens of another country, and which would force employers to make sure their immigrant workers were in the country legally.

In 2007, Rep. David Swinford killed the bills. He was chairman of the House State Affairs committee, and refused to let the bills come up for a vote. Swinford said it could have cost the state up to $300 million to defend the bills in federal court, and he considered it a waste of money -- especially since immigration is a federal problem and not a state problem. The bills, especially the denial of citizenship to children born in the U.S., are clearly unconstitutional.

Fortunately, it looks like 2009 will see Berman's bills suffering the same fate they did two years ago. With only about three weeks to go in the session, it is extremely doubtful the bills will ever make it out of committee.

Berman says, "Most people don't have the intestinal fortitude or the guts, the political will to deal with troubling issues like these."

The truth is that even the Republican-dominated Texas legislature is not crazy enough to pass these racist-inspired bills. As Trey Martinez Fischer said, "We're here to do state law and state policy. We leave the immigration issues to the feds."

Thank goodness these bills are once again dying an ignoble death in committee.