Congressman's controversial migrant warning

The American flag hangs in the production area of a Marble plant in Iowa. Photo / AP

Republican Congressman Steve King of Iowa has gained notoriety for his often contentious - and, occasionally, almost overtly racist - comments about immigration and the demographics of the United States.

Yesterday, in a tweet about the nationalist Dutch politician Geert Wilders, King again appears to have crossed the line.

"Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny," King wrote. "We can't restore our civilisation with somebody else's babies."

The formulation of "our" civilisation being at risk from "somebody else's babies" is a deliberate suggestion that American civilisation is threatened by unnamed "others" - almost certainly a reference to non-Westerners. The idea that national identity and racial identity overlap entirely is the crux of white nationalism; King's formulation toes close to that line, if it doesn't cross. American culture, of course, was formed over the past two centuries by the assimilation of immigrants from a broad range of nations - first mostly European but later a broader diaspora. Iowa remains one of the most homogeneously white in the United States.

King's tweet echoes comments he made during the 2016 presidential election when, as a supporter of Donald Trump, he suggested that white people had contributed more to civilisation than any other "subgroup".

Even before the advent of Trump, King railed against the criminal threat posed by immigrants from Mexico. In 2013 he said that, for every immigrant in the country illegally who becomes valedictorian, there are "another 100 out there that - they weigh 130 pounds, and they've got calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert".

Last year, King was criticised for having a Confederate flag on his office desk - especially odd since Iowa was a Union state in the Civil War.

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