By Alex Wukman

I wish I could say we were making this up, I really do. I wish that this was an unfunny joke we thought up one night after a few too many Lone Stars, but its not. State Representative Debbie Riddle (R-Tomball) who made her name in the Free Press for her vow to introduce a copycat to Arizona’s “Papers, please” law has decided to double down on the crazy. A bill she proposed on March 2, Texas Indepedence Day, would make the penalty for knowingly hiring an undocumented immigrant a State Jail Felony.

The proposed for hiring someone without a legal immigration status would go up to two years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Riddle included one glaring exception in House Bill 1202, domestic servants. This is not a joke, Riddle’s bill exempts anyone who hires an undocumented immigrant “for the purpose of obtaining labor or other work to be performed exclusively or primarily at a single-family residence.” The reason for the exemption, according to Riddle’s chief of staff John English, is to avoid slowing down Texas’ economy.

Representative Aaron Pena, another state Republican, told CNN that the execption is necessary because otherwise “a large segment of the population would go to jail.” “When it comes to household employees or yard workers it is extremely common for Texans to hire people who are likely undocumented workers, it is so common it is overlooked,” said Pena.

I try not to get emotional when I’m writing these. I really do, but I have to because rarely does a bill so perfectly encapsulate the GOPs racist, upper class agenda. After all the only inference that can be drawn from this piece of legislation is that Republicans believe it’s ok for Hispanics to clean their pools, cook their food and fold their laundary but once they want to work somewhere else, once the brown people want to work somewhere where they aren’t wiping massa’s ass, they have a problem.