Posted on 08/15/2011 5:20:37 AM PDT by normy
Governor, let me ask you about immigration. How many undocumented immigrants are there in Alaska? I don't know, I don't know. That's a good question.
As governor, how do you deal with them? Do you think they all should be deported? There is no way that in the US we would roundup every illegal immigrant -there are about 12 million of the illegal immigrants- not only economically is that just an impossibility but that's not a humane way anyway to deal with the issue that we face with illegal immigration.
Do you then favor an amnesty for the 12 or 13 million undocumented immigrants? No, I do not. I do not. Not total amnesty. You know, people have got to follow the rules. They've got to follow the bar, and we have got to make sure that there is equal opportunity and those who are here legally should be first in line for services being provided and those opportunities that this great country provides.
To clarify, so you support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants? I do because I understand why people would want to be in America. To seek the safety and prosperity, the opportunities, the health that is here. It is so important that yes, people follow the rules so that people can be treated equally and fairly in this country.
Judith Grace, has me watching Univision. She is on 11:00AM during the week. I don’t know what she is talking about because the hips and legs have my undivided attention.
No more texas Govs.
That is inaccurate. He may not have done everything we wanted, but he has taken real action on multiple fronts.
Other posters in this thread have provided lists with links of the pro-enforcement actions he has taken and tried to take. A few I remember off the top of my head are voter id, sending rangers to police the borders, doing overflights of the borders, strengthening the ability of police to detain illegals. Tried to get an anti-sanctuary bill through the special session, and has taken executive steps to stop cities from providing de-facto amnesty.
He has spoken against amnesty. NumbersUsa, which gave him a D- overall, still said he was good on border security.
Palin may understand the problem, and I happen to like the stance she has taken, but I see more than a few people here distorting what she actually said to make her sound more strident on the issue than she actually is. I would note that NumbersUsa gave her a D on the issue, so clearly they don't share your faith that she "understands the problem" from their perspective.
I read throught the NumbersUSA web page.
Bachmann by far looks the best right now. Palin has not commented, according to NumbersUSA, on 8 out of 12 of their questions, the highest of any candidate or potential candidate.
If Palin gets in the race, and on the 8 out 12 remaining questions they put up, she does not improve, then she can be eliminated like Perry.
This is one web page and this is what they said about Perry’s comments:
End Birthright Citizenship
Gov. Perry has made no statements regarding the ending of Birthright Citizenship.
Perry has commented on “Ending Birthright Citizenship”, and Perry said it was divisive.
So, when NumbersUsa finally gets those comments by Perry, he will have a guaranteed “F”, along with Ron Paul.
Perry is eliminated from GOP Contention because of what we know about him, and his comments, and in-state tuitions law passed and signed by him.
Palin is a question mark right now, on illegal immigration.
Well, you build it right in the center, and then provide fish gates so they can get back and forth!!!
Actually, he has several entries where he hasn’t made comments yet, just like Palin. And there’s no indication that they would move him to an F given that they already know he spoke unsympathetically about that one issue.
And yes, Palin isn’t actually running for office yet, so we can’t expect she’d have given a speech on all their issues. But it seems odd to presume she will be right on all the issues, when she clearly COULD have answered all those questions if she wanted to, as she has multiple outlets for expressing her opinion.
I believe that she isn’t as hard on illegal immigration as a good number of people here are. Maybe because she hasn’t dealt with the problems like some of us have seen in our states, or maybe it’s her compassionate christian outlook which makes it hard for her to say “throw them all out”.
She never did anything about Alaska’s sancturary cities. She didn’t create them, and I don’t fault her for them, but if she really was a tough-as-nails anti-illegal, you’d think she would have taken on the sanctuary cities. At least Perry has taken some action against the cities in Texas, and he pushed a real bill in the last session.
I certainly don’t think Perry’s positions in texas are right for the next President. However, I don’t know yet if he would try at the federal level what he did at the state level. Given Perry’s clear belief in state’s rights and the 10th amendment, I believe he would never sign a federal dream act, leaving that to the states, and he would provide border enforcement but not force the states to accept a fence over the entire border if the state showed why it wasn’t necessary.
I also think he’d support the 287G program, and he’d enforce existing laws against illegals, and would start deporting them again, as he did all this in Texas, and that is the federal government’s job.
I think it’s time we really dig down deeper, and move on from the attempts to pick the hot-button words that conservatives hate and try to stick them on candidates as if they are one-dimensional characters.
We aren’t going to reject a candidate for a bad former act; if we did, we wouldn’t have a candidate(notwithstanding the belief of at least one freeper that Sarah Palin never ever makes any mistakes or does anything we don’t like).
Perry said eliminating the citizenship for babies born to illegal immigrants was divisive and wrong.
Our country is drowning in debt and the illegal immigration problem will kill us, just like California has now where to go in their budget.
I do not trust Perry in this important issue. He is GWB all over again.
Illegal Immigration is too important of an issue, and I do not trust Perry.
I am not going to base my evaluation of Perry on NumbersUSA, who hasn’t even posted his comments on the “babies being born in the USA, of illegal immigrants.=”
Maybe they won’t move him to F, but, if you look at Perry’s statements and him not wanting to offend the Mexicans, it is GWB all over again.
I will not go for that.
I did a quick google search; in 2005 “Perry increases border security with more troops, equipment”
A 2008 border security report cites the additional expenditures for increasing border security, and notes $110 million appropriation for new security, and also says “Because increased funding for border operations has led to a decrease in crime, the state should
sustain funding for border operations at the state level,”
The report further mentions a 2006 Perry initiative that was successful: “The Texas Border Security Strategy established by Governor Perry in February 2006, has been successful in reducing crime and enhancing border security.”
This year, politicfact texas found that Perry kept his promise to fund border security even though there were big budget cuts: “Budget increases state funding for border security”
So, there is a 6-year record of Perry being active and successful on the issue of border security in Texas.
And NumbersUsa gave him a “good” rating on border security, saying all he had to do to make it to “excellent” was to lay out his plan for federal border security.
I don’t see him being weak on border security, which is one of the big issues at the federal level.
He also isn’t weak on deporting illegals in Texas, and federal deportation is another of the big issues.
And because of his states-rights record, I don’t expect he’ll support a federal dream act.
I think some of the attacks on his texas record are simply wrong on the facts, others are correct but don’t really apply to the job of President, and some are mitigated by his states-rights stance.
...If you break it down to a singularity, it's easier to discern than generalities...
...That's just me...
The in flow of Illegal Immigrants needs to be stopped or nearly stopped.
“Enhanced” Border security is what GWB and Obama have also done. There is stil hundreds of thousands of Illegals crossing the southern border every year.
10,000 to 15,000 National Guard Troops are needed to stop the in-flow of illegal immigrants to a trickle.
Perry like GWB, will not go for that as he has shown too much respect to the feelings of the Mexicans and Mexican Government.
The measures being done today, by border state governors, including Perry, or federal government, are not coming close to stopping the in-flow of Illegals.
Perry willl not militarize the border, which is what is needed to stop the illegal immigration.
According to a Perrybot on another thread, they are communicating behind the scenes via email. This must be a coordinated attack to deflect from their candidate's less than stellar record on illegal immigration.
Funny thing is I have questioned some of her statements in this old stuff in the past 2008. But I find it beating a dead horse now not very relevent to anything right now except ... I agree with your explaination that it looks like a Perry smoke screen by coming out over and over the past couple of days... ,
2008 Univision interview is like I love Lucy reruns LOL, and Lucy isnt a candidate.
Our political beliefs change over time, not necessarily major changes but more often incremental changes. I know my beliefs have been influenced over the years by being part of this forum.
That’s why I’m not really concerned about the fact that Perry was a Democrat 20 years ago. For me, that is a non-starter. We all know what’s happened in the Democrat party over the last 20 years. It’s been taken over by wacko, un-American nutjobs. Plenty of former Democrats have switched parties. I’m more concerned about Perry’s stance on illegal immigration, and the appearance of graft and corruption behind the Gardasil executive order.
Obviously, I don’t know Sarah Palin, but I’m sure her political beliefs have been refined over the years as well. I don’t imagine as the governor of Alaska, illegal immigration was a big issue she had to deal with. I think she is right when she says you can’t just round them all up and kick them out. Kicking out the ones we discover is doable, but rounding them up would be a logistical (and political) nightmare. It would be easier to remove their incentives for being here so that they self-deport.
Sarah’s recent comments about illegal immigration and amnesty show that she has changed her views somewhat. I’m assuming that’s because she has had to start thinking about things from a national perspective, rather than a state perspective. In my view, that’s a good thing.
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