Republican State Senator: Some Hispanics "Really Have No Business Voting Anyhow"

Rep. Alan Hays

​Florida will add two new congressional districts in 2012, and the Senate Reapportionment Committee is meeting to determine where to place those districts. One of the leading plans includes carving out a new district in Orange, Osceola and Polk counties that would create a strongly Hispanic-leading district.

Well, Republican state Senator Alan Hays doesn't like the idea, because he thinks that means illegal immigrants will be voting.

"Before we design a district anywhere in the state of Florida for Hispanic voters, we need to ascertain that they are citizens of the United States," Hays said during the committee's meeting today. "We all know there are many Hispanic-speaking people in Florida that are not legal. And I just don't think it's right that we try to draw a district that encompasses people that really have no business voting anyhow."

Hays isn't convinced that the state's new draconian voter registration laws, which require a whopping three forms of ID, will be enough to deter illegal immigrants from voting.

Also never mind the fact that the population numbers come from the U.S. Census Bureau, which historically under counts illegal immigrants, as few actually fill out census forms.

Luis Garcia, the Miami Beach Democratic representative, has now demanded that Hays be removed from the committee in a letter to senate leaders obtained by The Miami Herald.

"For Senator Alan Hays to say that Central Florida's booming Hispanic community should not have full representation and warn that 'illegals' are the reason to ignore this sector of Florida's growing population is not only offensive, but serves no purpose in the contentious and challenging process of reapportionment," wrote Garcia.

Garcia, who is running for a U.S. Congress seat in 2012, also demands that Hays makes a public apology.

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