Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT) is now at the center of a massive controversy of her own making after she made a highly offensive comment to her constituents about immigrants. The statement was made during a town hall event in Newport, Vermont, in response to a question about current U.S. immigration policy.
In her response to the question, Balint said that a crackdown on illegal immigration will leave residents of the state without “anyone around to wipe our a–es.”
“Our economy is completely bound up in immigration and migrant labor,” Balint said to her constituents during the event. “We have to come to a place in Congress where it is no longer a political issue, but we see it as an existential issue for the country.”
“If we don’t have avenues for people to come here legally to work or to build a home here, I’m going to be really crude right now — we’re not going to have anybody around to wipe our a–es because we don’t have enough people in our country now to fill the jobs that we have,” she continued.
“We also want to make sure that we have an adult conversation in Congress” about immigration, Vermont’s only congressional representative stated during the town hall.
Chairman of the Vermont Republican Party, Paul Dame, is demanding that Balint issue an apology to the state’s immigrant community for the appalling sentiment contained in her comments.
“Congresswoman Balint should apologize — not only for her crude choice of words, but more importantly for the disturbing sentiment that the primary purpose of immigration is to perform labor that she deems beneath the dignity of others,” Dame wrote in a statement.
“At the heart of these remarks is an opinion so offensive and so profoundly out of touch that it reveals a fundamental lack of respect for those who come to this country — abiding by the rules — in pursuit of freedom, opportunity, and a better life,” he continued.
Dame went on to point out that immigrants living in the state have had stellar careers in various high-tech fields and served as “world-class physicians” in hospitals. He then noted they are “critical to our small business community, providing a wide array of goods and services that enrich our state.”
“The way Congresswoman Balint reduced Vermont’s hard-working legal immigrants to little more than ‘a– wipers’ is embarrassing,” the GOP chairman said. “She owes them — and all Vermonters — an apology for such a shameful characterization.”
The National Republican Congressional Committee also took a swipe at Bailnt over her comments, making the case that she was promoting “open borders.”
“While complaining about President Trump deporting illegal immigrants, Vermont Democrat Becca Balint claims: ‘We’re not going to have anyone around to wipe our a–es.’ Democrats’ goal is, was and always will be open borders,” the NRCC said in a post on X.
