By now everyone has seen Stephen Colbert’s opening statement during a hearing of the Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship and Border Security. But the most interesting moment was what happened at the end. Judy Chu, US Representative for California asks: “Mr. Colbert, you could work on so many issues, why are you interested in this issue?”
There is a brief pause. Colbert nervously brushes his fingers through his hair, and in the background you can hear the flick, flick, flicker of the cameras going off until they become a steady tap like a storm. It is in this moment that we see Colbert the character become Colbert the person and he says:
“I like talking about people who don’t have any power. And this seemed like one of the least powerful people in the United States are migrant workers who come and do our work but don’t have any rights as a result, and yet we still invite them to come here and at the same time ask them to leave and that’s an interesting contradiction to me. And you know, ‘what’s so ever you do for the least of my brothers.’ And these seemed like the least of our brothers—right now and lot of people are least brothers right now because the economy is so hard, and i don’t want to take any one’s hardship away from them or diminish anything like that, but migrant workers suffer and have no rights.”
