Kelly And Sinema Accused Of Betraying Democrats And Immigrants In “Quest To Appear Bipartisan”

kelly sinema
Sens. Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema dutifully posed with their vaccine records in D.C. on December 18, 2021. [Photo via Twitter]

Sens. Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema are facing criticism this week after voting to deny undocumented immigrants stimulus checks. The two Arizona senators are being accused of attempting to “look bipartisan.”

In a column in the Arizona Republic, Elvia Díaz, complains:

Talk about beating a dead horse. Arizona Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly voted with Republicans to block undocumented immigrants from getting stimulus checks.

But get this. Those in the country illegally are already ineligible to get federal aid, including stimulus checks, and there hasn’t been any talk to include them in President Joe Biden’s proposed $1.9 trillion relief package.

What was the point of the vote, then? Nothing but a political statement of meaningless partisanship at the expense of defenseless immigrants.

The move in practice is absolutely meaningless. But it does say a lot about Kelly and Sinema’s character and their inclination to use immigrants as political pawns in their quest to appear bipartisan.

Diaz is referring to an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2021 Budget offered by Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Senator Todd Young of Indiana that would prohibit illegal immigrants from receiving stimulus payments in the future.

Currently only those individuals with Social Security numbers may receive stimulus funds.

Diaz was not the only partisan to express outrage:

“We need to be able to depend on these senators that we worked so hard to elect,” Tomás Robles, an executive director of LUCHA, told the New York Times. “If they’re going to act like a moderate Republican, we will remember by the time elections come. We expect them to recognize that Latinos voted overwhelmingly for those two, and we expect them to repay our loyalty.”

Both Kelly and Sinema won their seats by running against Martha McSally as the Republican nominee. While McSally was the clear choice of the D.C. establishment, she never really connected with the Republican base. He moderate voting record as a member of Congress and her association with the late Sen. John McCain both worked against her in her Senate campaigns.

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