Senators push immigration reform, condemn King's remarks at Iowa forum

Two top U.S. Senate Democrats showed up at Ames Middle School Friday morning to push the case for immigration reform and condemn comments by U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Kiron.

U.S. Sens. Tom Harkin of Iowa and Richard Durbin of Illinois hosted a seven-member roundtable in the school's auditorium for roughly 270 people.

“We do have a lot in common: a lot of corn and soybeans in our neighboring states, a lot of immigrants to our neighboring states who built it into what it is today in Iowa and in Illinois, and we have a broken immigration system,” said Durbin, the Senate's highest-ranking member after Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

Durbin has worked on immigration reform for 12 years and is one of the so-called “Gang of Eight,” a group of four Republicans and four Democrats who drafted the Senate bill, also called the DREAM Act.

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Ames Middle School is located in King's congressional district. The western Iowa congressman has become a leading voice in the House for those opposed to the Senate bill, which awaits action in the Republican-controlled House.

And King, who earlier this year decided not to run for the Senate seat being vacated by Harkin, has been criticized by some Congressional Republicans for saying that for every valedictorian the DREAM Act would help, “there's another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds - and they've got calves the size of cantaloupes because they've been hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.”

Durbin and Harkin called the comments “offensive” and “hurtful” but stopped short of calling them racist.

The roundtable consisted of the two senators, a pastor, an immigration attorney, a union member who works at a meatpacking plant and two Hispanics who were brought into the United States illegally as young children.

Nick Harrington, the meatpacker with local 222, who works at a plant in Cherokee, Iowa, earned a standing ovation for his short speech about working alongside Latinos.

“They pay their taxes, just like me. They pay their insurance, just like me. They're working for a better life, for their families, just like me,” he said. “You cannot oppress people who are not afraid anymore.”

Durbin predicted the bill would get a hearing in the House before the year was out, despite news coming out of Washington, D.C., of intractable partisan gridlock.

“It's still alive,” Durbin said. “I call on the House of Representatives to let us have our vote (on the DREAM Act). I think the votes are there.”

There were a handful who showed up to support King and his rejection of the DREAM Act, too.

“I'm here to show support for Steve King because of the fact that unrestricted immigration is totally out of control in this country, and I don't see any remedy for it because the government refuses to enforce the existing laws,” said Michael Studer, who made the trip from Ayrshire in northwest Iowa to Ames.

Struder stood outside the school during the forum with a group of about a dozen people who held signs with anti-immigration reform messages and waved American flags.

But the vast majority who showed up were of the same mind as the Democratic senators.

“I think they have a bill that makes a lot of sense,” said Bob Rod, an Ames resident who attended the forum with his wife, Jo. “We're concerned for people. We're concerned for the common good. We think immigrants are getting a raw deal, and it doesn't have to be that way.”

Their friend, Elma Schiel, also of Ames, had some choice words for the Republican congressman.

“I'm here just to indicate my embarrassment that Steve King is an Iowan,” she said. “He is so unrepresentative of the majority and, somehow, he's got to be replaced.”

King spokeswoman Brittany Lester said in an email that the congressman had no additional comment about the forum. On Thursday, King said in a statement that “I will not be responding to political initiatives during the time flags are flying at half-staff for America's most decorated hero, Col. Bud Day, of Sioux City. There will be time after the last notes of taps echo off the Iowa bluffs."

Day, a Medal of Honor recipient, died a week ago, and King attended his funeral service on Thursday in Florida.