'Latino voters are a force that is growing faster than Republicans can withstand,' says Gutiérrez. Gutiérrez warns of last GOP president

Democratic Rep. Luis Gutiérrez said Tuesday that if House Republicans don’t help to pass immigration reform in 2014, George W. Bush will be “the last Republican president in American history.”

“Latino voters are repelled, and the loud but small contingent of immigration opponents have backed the Republican Party into a corner that they don’t have the courage to break out of,” the Illinois congressman said in a speech on the House floor. “So, Mr. Speaker, I give you George W. Bush, the man who will go down in history as the last Republican president in American history. Tom Donohue is right: There is a demographic reality that will make Republicans a footnote in history — just like the Whigs and Know-Nothings — unless they do something to get the immigration issue off the table.”


Gutiérrez was referring to U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue, who last week said Republicans “shouldn’t bother to run a candidate in 2016” if Congress doesn’t pass immigration reform this year.

( Also on POLITICO: States take on immigration)

In his speech, Gutiérrez added that the House needs to act before the July 4 holiday if it wants any chance at approving legislation, given that the 2014 midterm campaign will ramp up during the summer.

The congressman has long been a fierce advocate for immigration reform. In 2011, he was arrested in front of the White House while participating in an immigration rally. He has often criticized President Barack Obama for his deportation policy and for what Gutiérrez called his failure to address the issue adequately during his first term. He was also reportedly part of a group of Hispanic lawmakers who almost blocked a vote on the Affordable Care Act in 2010 in the interest of forcing the president to act on immigration reform.

In his speech Tuesday, Gutiérrez mentioned that the demographic trends of Hispanics in the U.S. make immigration reform a political necessity for both parties. “Latino voters are a force that is growing faster than Republicans can withstand and are tilting more towards the Democrats with each day Republicans stand in the way of stopping deportations that are breaking up immigrant families,” he said.

Appearing alongside a poster with pictures of former Republican Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Bush, Gutiérrez said: “If you do nothing on immigration, I guess you can take comfort in knowing that from Abraham Lincoln to George W. Bush, you had a pretty good run.”