Storm Lake Times: Western Iowans aren’t ‘heartless hayseeds’

Art Cullen of the Storm Lake Times says the nation (and the rest of the state) shouldn’t judge western Iowa on its loudest mouth, U.S. Rep. Steve King.

(And he gives Iowa Independent a shoutout!)

Here is Cullen in the Storm Lake Times:

Our thanks go to Iowa Independent, a website that noted Rep. Steve King’s strong support of the “widow penalty,” which says that an alien who marries a US citizen shall be deported if that citizen dies within two years of the marriage and the alien has not yet been granted permanent residency.

King argued from the floor of the US House that doing away with the widow penalty could bring undesirables into the United States.

He said:

“A soldier, man or woman, could get drunk in Bangkok, wake up in the morning and be married, as will happen sometimes in places like Las Vegas or Bangkok, be killed the next day, and the spouse who was a product of the evening’s celebration would have then a right to claim access to come to the United States on a green card.”

That’s quite a hypothetical that assumes soldiers are a bunch of black-out drunkards, as Iowa Independent noted. But, the Indepdent goes on, how would King know since he dodged the draft with a student deferment in college and then quit college when the threat of draft had passed.

The fact is that 160 widows face deportation because their spouses died within two years of marriage. Since our immigration bureaucracy is so inept, there is no practical way to get permanent residency papers completed in that time.

So King would just ship them back.

There is an alternative to this knucklehead. His name is Rob Hubler, a retired Presbyterian minister who would be a tremendous congressman. He would not have the nation think that Western Iowans are a bunch of paranoid, heartless hayseeds living in fear of stray Romanians.

But maybe we are. Prove us wrong in November.