Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), a conservative firebrand who has won headlines in the media and scorn from many Hispanics for his frequent character-bashing of the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, will venture onto unsympathetic territory on Sunday. Jorge Ramos, host of Univision's "Al Punto Con Jorge Ramos", a public-affairs news show, will receive him via video connection in what advance transcripts indicate will be an often-testy encounter. Ramos has recently shown himself willing to editorialize on the subject of immigration reform, taking aim at members of the GOP who have fought against any offer of legalizing measures for the undocumented.
RELATED: Would Steve King Ever Support Legalization For The Undocumented?
"If Republicans in the House of Representatives vote against the immigration reform legislation that was recently approved by the Senate - or if they prevent it from coming to a vote at all - they will lose the presidential election in 2016," Ramos wrote in a column published Wednesday. "It will not even matter who their candidate is." Tacking on a rebuke to House Speaker John Boehner, who has refused to introduce the Senate's immigration bill in the House, Ramos wrote, "Perhaps Boehner wants to be the Hispanic community's new villain".
This Sunday, Ramos will challenge King on earlier comments in which the Iowa representative compared determining which potential immigrants should be allowed to enter the US to picking hunting dogs. "You want a good bird dog? You want one that's going to be aggressive? Pick the one that's the friskiest...not the one that's over there sleeping in the corner," King said then. "You get the pick of the litter and you got yourself a pretty good bird dog. Well, we've got the pick of every donor civilization on the planet. We've got the vigor from the planet to come to America."
RELATED: Paul Ryan, 'Guiding Light' Of Reform Supporters, Says Undocumented 'Just Want To Have A Legal Status', Not Citizenship
Ramos begins to question King on the comment. "You recently compared immigrants to dogs," he begins.
"No, I didn't," interjects King, calling it a "mischaracterization" of his actual comment. "That speech was about celebrating legal immigrants. Legal, not illegal immigrants. Legal immigrants. And I said they were the cream of the crop. It's the vigor of America that comes because people from all donor civilizations on the planet, once they come here, they dream-"
"So you don't want to apologize for that comment," Ramos cuts in.
"That was the speech. It's been mischaracterized by people on the left. It's been intentionally and dishonestly done so to drive wedges between people on the base of race."
Ramos later tells King that he didn't think it "complimentary" to compare a group of immigrants to dogs.
RELATED: House 'Gang of Seven' Plan to Include Path to Citizenship, With New Conditions To Appease Republicans
Elsewhere on "Al Punto", Ramos asks his guest, "You don't want to legalize 11 million undocumented immigrants. So what would you do with them?"
King evades the question at first. But Ramos later returns to it, making reference to Mitt Romney's advocating to undocumented immigrants that they "self-deport".
"Well, here -- it isn't my responsibility to solve that problem," King eventually replies. "And American citizens and legal Americans do not have a moral obligation to solve the problem of the 11 million people that are here unlawfully. That's a condition they willfully stepped into on their own, and some of them will make the decision on their own on what to do. Many of them actually will do that." He adds, "It's not my responsibility to address that, Jorge."
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