GOP battle over Salazar’s Dignity Act immigration bill has Republicans lashing out

Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) has a message for those attacking her and her signature Dignity Act immigration reform and border security legislation: Bring it on.

The South Florida congresswoman has faced an onslaught of criticism from right-wing commentators and from fellow Republicans in Congress over the bill over the last few weeks — complete with calls for primary challengers to end not only her career, but that of any GOP co-sponsor.

“I welcome it,” Salazar said Thursday of the primary threats. “Those are the rules of the game.”

“I like that game. It’s better than the Cuban game or the Venezuelan or the Iranian,” Salazar said. “It’s not pretty, it’s not perfect, it’s not comfortable, but it’s the American way of doing business.”

Days earlier, she approached one of the fiercest Republican critics of her bill, Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas), on the House floor.

“I said, why don’t you explain to me what is it that you know that I don’t about immigration?” Salazar said of their conversation, adding it was “very nice” and that Gill had “some legitimate points.”

Salazar said that she pitched Gill on doing a public, perhaps televised, debate over her legislation.

Asked about that conversation, Gill — first correcting a question about the measure by noting its official name is the Dignidad Act — said he had good conversations with both Salazar and Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), another one of the bill’s cosponsors.

“We’re just diametrically opposed on this issue. I’m taking the conservative side and they’ve taken the Democrat side,” Gill said. “We are so wildly divergent on this issue. It’s hard to imagine how we reach some form of consensus.”

As for a public debate about the bill, Gill said he would be open to doing something like that.

“I think that the........

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