Candidate Tancredo talks about immigration
By ANDY KARR/NDN Editor
|
| |
Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo touted the need for secure borders during his stop in Newton Sunday afternoon and called for stronger enforcement of existing immigration laws.
The Congressman from Colorado spoke before several dozen people at the Newton Arboretum and spent significant time talking about immigration and secure borders.
“There are a lot of issues, but I know that I often speak on this one at length, but I want you to understand why. It’s not just a little thing. It is a huge issue. It has impact on our society in a million ways,” he said. “It’s like the canary in the tunnel, in the mine, it’s an indicator that something is wrong.
Tancredo also talked about vilifying Western culture, something he has come across in history books. He wants to protect Western culture and said that immigrants coming to America should assimilate. One way to do this would be by learning English rather than turning America into a bilingual nation.
“It is a divisive thing, it is not a cohesive thing. Language is something that is supposed to hold us together,” he said, before holding up a copy of the Ottumwa Courier and pointing out different sections in English and in Spanish.
“I think that this is significant,” he said. “I think that we are certainly becoming a bilingual society and I’m telling you again, I don’t think that’s good.”
Tancredo also attacked the immigration bill championed by fellow presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, calling it a “terrible, terrible bill” because it amounted to amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants.
“Amnesty is lousy because it’s terrible public policy. All the people who come here the right way, what does it tell them?” he asked. “If you spend time and energy and money to do it the right way and we give the same thing that you’ve just earned, this thing called citizen ship to anybody who came across the border ... we do that and it makes a mockery of the system and it’s a slap in the face of people who do it the right way.”
Tancredo’s suggestion for dealing with immigration is to simply enforce the law. He would like a barrier at the border and military personnel to patrol it and tough penalties for employers who hire illegal immigrants.
“Enforce the law. Let’s just try that,” he said drawing applause from the audience.
Though much of his time was devoted to immigration and securing the border, Tancredo also touched on several other issues.On education, he said he believes that the federal government should not be involved in education. “The best thing we can do for education is to leave it to the states and to the people which is the way the constitution actually constructed this whole thing,” he said.
Regarding the economy, one questioner wondered why tariffs wouldn’t be slapped on manufactured products made outside the United States.
“If somebody leaves the United States specifically for the purpose of opening a plant in another country and producing a product that’s then going to be imported to the United States, I don’t see why you wouldn’t slap a tariff on that right away,” Tancredo said.
On the abortion issue, Tancredo said he would appoint justices to the supreme court with a litmus test asking them specifically if they would overturn Roe v. Wade. “Will you vote to overturn Roe v. Wade? The answer better be yes or else I’m not going to appoint them.”
Tancredo spoke for roughly an hour and said he would be heading back to Washington this week.
