Leave it Vice President Joe Biden to say something that borders on "unmitigated buffoonery." At a Washington gathering of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce on Thursday, Vice President Biden admitted the nearly 12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States are already “American citizens” in his view.
“Now we have Joe Biden standing up and telling us in this unbelievably delirious rant – he has the nerve, first of all, to invoke the words of Teddy Roosevelt in an asinine way,” Pat said on radio this morning, “And then he also says this.”
BIDEN: You know, 11 million people living in the shadows, I believe they're already American citizens. Teddy Roosevelt said it better. He said, ‘Americanism is not a question of birthplace or creed or a line of descent. It's the question of principles, idealism, and character.’ These people are just waiting, waiting for a chance to be able to contribute fully. And by that standard, 11 million undocumented persons are already Americans, in my view.
Pat took serious issue not just with the Vice President’s assertion that illegal immigrants are actually citizens but with the way he chose to harken former President Theodore Roosevelt in a less than truthful way.
“That's unbelievable,” Pat said. “’They're already American citizens.’ No, they're not! This is the vice president of the United States. This is unmitigated buffoonery. And then to invoke Teddy Roosevelt – here's what Teddy Roosevelt said, Joe.”
Pat proceeded to read, in full, President Roosevelt’s thoughts on immigration as written in a letter to the American Defense Society in 1919 – 10 years after his presidency:
In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...
There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.
“I mean it doesn't get any clearer. Joe must have missed those quotes,” Pat concluded. “I'm not a fan [of Roosevelt]. He was a progressive. But his thoughts on immigration are not as Biden presented them… [Biden is] so disingenuous and, again, [it was] such an absolute lie.”
Front page image courtesy of the AP
