Rep. Don Young faces backlash for ‘wetback’ slur

By Dana Milbank, WashPost, Published: April 1

As lawmakers put the finishing touches on an immigration deal, veteran Rep. Don Young decided this would be a good time to come out with an immigration plan of his own. His involves calling Latino immigrants “wetbacks.”

For Young, now in his 41st year in the House, Operation Wetback quickly became Operation Red Backside.

With commendable speed, Republican leaders denounced the Alaskan for remarking in a radio interview last week that when he was a boy in California, his father “used to hire 50 to 60 wetbacks to pick tomatoes” on his farm.

Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.), the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, fired off a statement saying that “slurs” such as Young’s “do nothing to elevate our party.”

(More here.)