Four words for the Latino group expecting to meet with U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) just two days after the midterm elections to discuss immigration issues: beware the Cornyn Con. The Texas senator has a long history of claiming that he wants to work with advocates on issues important to them, only to pull a Lucy and snatch away the immigration football to derail any hope of humane, legislative solutions. We know this because he’s done it over and over and over again.
“Cornyn executed the Cornyn Con when immigration reform had a chance to pass the Senate in 2006, 2007, and 2013,” immigrant rights advocacy group America’s Voice noted late last year. “He failed to thwart Senate approval of immigration reform in 2006 and 2013; he helped to defeat it in 2007.”
Advocates have been calling him out for years. “With silver tongue, moderate voice and devious intent,” said America’s Voice leader Frank Sharry,” he is determined to scuttle a bipartisan plan by pretending to be for something as a means of opposing it.”
Cornyn did it yet again this year, when he claimed he wanted to find a legislative solution for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients, only to support Donald Trump’s white supremacist immigration wishlist instead, a non-starter so extreme it won only 39 votes in the Senate.
Cornyn, having done nothing to protect the thousands of DACA recipients in his state after claiming he want to protect DACA recipients, promptly declared any hope for a breakthrough dead and moved on.
But now that Cornyn—who also voted for Trump’s historically unpopular frat boy judge—is facing re-election in 2020 in a state where U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is facing a worthy challenger, it’s no surprise murmurings of Cornyn supposedly wanting to, yet again, come to the table on immigration solutions are reemerging. “Whatever the outcome,” America’s Voice said, “it’s always the same play.”
There’s no reason to believe that Cornyn won’t meet with LULAC—“I am available almost anytime,” he tweeted about the McClatchy story, though that hasn’t always been the case—it’s the false reassurances he’ll make to advocates meeting with him in good faith that are the worry. Consider yourselves warned.