We handed Republicans the House, the Senate, and the White House for one reason: to stop the open-borders nonsense that nearly sank this country. Six House Republicans just looked at that mandate, laughed, and voted to keep the Haitian migrant perk buffet open for business.
Good grief. The call is coming from inside the house.
Here’s the deal. Temporary Protected Status for Haitian migrants was supposed to be — stay with us here — temporary. That’s literally the first word in the name. But somehow “temporary” has stretched into a decade-plus program where hundreds of thousands of Haitians sit in the United States collecting work permits, deportation protection, and a menu of federal benefits that the average American worker couldn’t access if he got hit by a bus.
Congress had a chance this week to shut the gravy train down. Most of the Republican caucus did what we sent them there to do. Six of them did not.
The Blaze did the work, ran the roll call, and printed every one of their names. Go read the list yourself. Save it. Screenshot it. Tape it to your fridge. Because these six just earned themselves a spot at the top of every primary challenger’s whiteboard from now until the next election.
What is “absurd” about the perks? Let’s count.
Haitian TPS recipients get work authorization — the ability to walk into any American job and compete with the guy down the street who was born here. They get federal protection from deportation for immigration violations that would get a Canadian kicked out in ten minutes. They get access to a thicket of federal benefits that nobody running for office ever seems to want to talk about. And they get renewals every 18 months like clockwork, because the bureaucrats running the program treat “expiration date” like a suggestion.
This is the program six Republicans just voted to extend.
Now, to be fair, we understand that some districts have large Haitian communities and some congressmen feel pressure from vocal local advocacy groups. We understand that the politics in a place like South Florida look different than the politics in, say, rural Ohio. We get it.
We just don’t care.
Voters in every district — blue, red, purple, plaid — gave Republicans the majority on one simple promise: stop the migrant faucet. Stop the benefits. Stop handing out the keys to the kingdom to people who walked in through a busted door and then demanded a room upgrade. That’s the job. That was the only job.
Six Republicans decided the job wasn’t important enough to show up for.
The Blaze called the perks “absurd” and honestly, they’re being generous. Absurd is what you say when you’re trying to keep it printable. Insulting is more like it. Because every American working two jobs to keep the lights on, every grandma living off a Social Security check that hasn’t kept up with inflation, every young couple that can’t afford a house because there are five people bidding on every listing — those people are watching their government extend freebies to non-citizens while their own needs get filed under “we’ll get to it.”
The math doesn’t work. It never worked. Every dollar spent extending TPS for people who were supposed to go home fifteen years ago is a dollar that didn’t go to the Americans Congress was elected to serve.
And yet.
Here’s the part that should really light up your phone. These six Republicans didn’t have to do this. The bill was going to pass or fail without them. Most of their caucus was voting the right way. They could have put their name in the “no” column, collected their paycheck, and gone back home to shake hands at the county fair. Easy.
Instead, they went looking for the spotlight. They chose to be the deciding votes. They chose to go on record saying “yes, extend it.” That wasn’t an accident. That was a choice.
And that’s why every one of them is a problem.
We’re not interested in hearing the excuses. “The district is complicated.” “The politics are nuanced.” “You don’t understand the local pressures.” Save it. The politics are not nuanced. The politics are: we elected you to stop this, you didn’t stop this, we’re going to find someone who will.
There’s a word for a Republican who votes like a Democrat on the single biggest issue that won the party its majority. The word is “primary target.” The Blaze just gave us six of them.
Here’s Bob’s unsolicited advice to every conservative activist, donor, and county chair reading this. Write the names down. Don’t forget them. Don’t let them slide by with a press release and a tax-cut vote six months from now and hope you’ve forgotten. The next primary in these six districts is coming, and there are good conservatives in every one of those districts who would gladly take the seat and actually vote with the team.
This is how you clean up a caucus. Not with hand-wringing opinion columns. With challengers who actually win.
A majority is a terrible thing to waste. We gave these people a majority. If they won’t use it to stop the most obvious, most unpopular, most offensive program in the federal budget, then they don’t deserve to hold the seat.
Prediction: at least two of the six will pretend this vote never happened and try to paper over it with a “tough on the border” town hall this summer. It won’t work. The internet remembers.
Prediction number two: at least one of the six will be gone by this time next year. And it won’t be because the Democrats beat them. It’ll be because their own voters finally figured out that a Republican who votes like a Democrat is just a Democrat with a better wardrobe.
Go read the names. Share them with your friends. And let’s get to work.