Freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said that she probably loves the United States more than natural born U.S. citizens.
Omar came to the U.S. as a refugee from Somalia.
“Something that I get criticized for all the time. It’s not what you think, so don’t gasp,” Omar said at the Netroots Nation conference in Philadelphia on Saturday during a panel discussion titled, A Vision for Progressive Foreign Policy in the 2020 Elections and Beyond. “It is that I am anti-American because I criticize the United States.”
Omar continued, “I believe, as an immigrant, I probably love this country more than anyone that is naturally born and because I am ashamed of it continuing to live in its hypocrisy, that I work so hard to make sure that others who have had that, like, ‘just be American, why don’t you be more like an American?’ can continue to say that — ‘why can’t you be more like an American?’ because it used to be a very positive thing.”
Omar also said that she thinks dogs are being treated better than undocumented immigrants in the U.S.
“One of our members said to me, if there were dogs in those cages, every single member of Congress would vote to make sure that all of these cages didn’t exist any longer,” she said, referring to children held in detention centers at the southern border. “We live in a society and govern in a body that might value the life of a dog more than they value the life of a child who might not look like theirs.”
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