Eddie Garcia moved to the United States as a child years ago and has since become a naturalized citizen. Now that Eddie is all grown up, he has a lot to say about immigration and America.
He loves to tell anyone who will listen that he and his parents came to America as legal immigrants. He also loves to promote the English language and bash undocumented immigrants. Eddie lives in Tennessee and has been very involved with trying to get English-only legislation passed in the state, most notably pushing legislation that would make English the only language available for people who take a drivers license test. In March of this year, Garcia testified in favor of the English-only bill.
Garcia is also an advisory board member of ProEnglish, a group formed by white nationalist John Tanton who still sits on the group’s board for directors. Tanton is the father of the modern day anti-immigrant movement. He has warned of a “Latin onslaught” and has also stated, “I’ve come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.”
Tanton founded other anti-immigrant organizations such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Eddie Garcia, in recent months, has expressed extreme anti-immigrant hate on ProEnglish’s and his own Facebook pages. On May 4 of this year, Garcia, who at that time ran the ProEnglish Facebook page stated, “Yea, I’ve had it. I am sympathetic with the issues of people during the last two days of flooding in Nashville, but to hear of non-English speaking immigrants WHO HAVE BEEN HERE OVER 3 years that THEY ARE wondering why there aren’t Spanish speaking or Arabic speaking emergency personnel to help is ABSURD!LEARN ENGLISH …and you WON’T have any issues….FOR GOD’s SAKE!!”
Here, Garcia bashes immigrants who were wondering why there weren’t multilingual rescue workers to help them during the terrible flooding in the Nashville area at that time. A supporter responded to Garcia’s rant by stating, “OH, you are so right Eddie!!!!! They have no reason to complain about translators. There’s a fix for that!!
This week however, Garcia took his immigrant bashing one step further by comparing undocumented immigrants who come to America to rape. On August 20 Eddie wrote this on his Facebook page, “Yet another vivid and CLEAR example of the raping of America by illegal immigrants and the disgust that illegals who are here continue to demand rights and that their presence is acceptable.” […] “Not saying that EVERY illegal is a member of a gang or drug dealer, but they are WITHOUT A DOUBT a criminal by virtue of their ILL…EGAL ENTRY in the USA.”
For Garcia to compare undocumented immigration to rape is a step too far. Rape is an extremely violent and psychology damaging crime that can be in no way be compared to immigration and the accusation that immigrants are harming the United States.
Disturbingly, this type of hate speech has become commonplace among anti-immigrant leaders like Garcia.