In getting himself arrested last night in front of the White House, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) fancies himself as the Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi of our era. In reality, he demonstrated, once again, that he is the rightful heir to the legacy of P.T. Barnum.
This latest incident is nothing more than a cheap stunt, the objective of which is to make Gutierrez a political player. Gutierrez’s goal is to ultimately reward with a blanket amnesty those that have broken and continue to break our immigration laws.
His arrest was reported on FoxNews.com, however, Gutierrez is no stranger to jails or controversies over his single obsession over amnesty. In addition to being arrested in May 2010 at the White House during a demonstration, in 2009, in the midst of a congressional debate over a taxpayer-funded $800 billion stimulus, Gutierrez took to the road with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in a multi-city tour to push for a comprehensive amnesty for illegal aliens, all on the heels of asking the American people to sacrifice in order to push through Congress the largest spending increase in several generations.
Dr. King and Gandhi used civil disobedience to fight against laws and policies that denied people their legitimate inalienable rights. Blacks were American citizens who were denied rights based on the color of their skin, while Indians were subject to imperial rule and wanted their independence. Gutierrez is trying to equate those struggles to a politically motivated effort to force America to reward people who broke into our country. While Gutierrez’s tactics are the same, that is where the similarity ends.
The needs and interests of Gutierrez’s constituents have clearly taken a back seat to his one-issue crusade. Rather than continue taking the fine people of Chicago for a ride, Gutierrez might consider resigning his seat and becoming a full-time amnesty activist. This way his constituents and American taxpayers won’t get stuck with the bill next time he has to be bailed out of jail. Then again, as P.T. Barnum once said “There’s a sucker born every minute.”