Good fences make good neighbors.
Posted on 08/21/2005 3:31:38 PM PDT by 4.1O dana super trac pak
ALBERT LEA, Minn. — Illegal immigration is a dagger aimed at the heart of Americans, according to U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., a leader in the fight against illegal immigration.
Republican Congressmen Gil Gutknecht from Minnesota and Tancredo, chairman of the 70-member House Immigration Reform Caucus, spoke to 100 people at a luncheon Tuesday in Albert Lea.
"Please think about national security," Tancredo said. "People are coming across our borders to do very bad things to us."
The topic was based on immigration, whether legal or illegal.
"It has nothing to do with race, ethnicity or country of origin" but everything to do with the problems that stem from it, Tancredo said.
Those include economic, employment and labor issues as well as crime rates, to name a few, he said.
He said illegal immigration wouldn't be such a big problem if the federal government would enforce the law.
"We have national security problems," he said. Not securing America's borders is the most shameful act on the part of the federal government, Tancredo said.
"This issue of massive immigration is a dagger pointing at our heart," he said.
Tancredo said momentum is growing to combat immigration issues, but a "great wall of opposition" remains.
"I want you to ask your local elected officials — I don't care if it's the county commissioners or the governor — ‘What are you going to do about this issue,' " Tancredo said.
A woman in the audience asked Tancredo if he planned to run for president.
"We need you," she said.
Tancredo said he would if the issue doesn't gain attention at the presidential level.
Gutknecht told the crowd that immigration is an issue that deserves national attention, and he provided many statistics and facts about immigration.
His family emigrated from Germany, Gutknecht said, and he fully supports legal immigration. However, "We cannot encourage individuals to break our laws and enter the country illegally.
"Border protection is important to our national security and economy. For more than two centuries, Americans have fought to protect our sovereignty and secure our borders. Sadly, today our borders are a sieve, allowing illegal immigrants to pour into the country," he added.
Gutknecht offered what he called a snapshot of a typical illegal alien: 32 years old with an average education of seven years, an hourly wage of $5.45 and an annual individual income of $8,982.
Other facts he presented:
-- 42 percent of births to immigrants are to illegal alien mothers. In 2005, births to illegal aliens will account for one in 10 births in the United States.
-- Illegal aliens are eligible for emergency Medicaid services and other medical services.
-- More than 29 percent of federal prisoners are aliens.
-- 55 percent of hired farm workers are unauthorized to work in the U.S.
-- In Minnesota, the cost to educate children of illegal aliens was more than $276 million.
"Facts are stubborn things," Gutknecht said.
Ken Dalager traveled to Albert Lea with at least 10 others from Austin concerned about illegal immigration.
"The people that go to the trouble of getting citizenship, I don't think they're much trouble," Dalager said. "The others slip in undercover and just kind of do things how they want to do them."
Conversations grew heated before the congressmen started speaking, however, as people debated the issue during dinner conversation.
"A simple way to stop illegal immigration is to find the companies that hire them," an Austin woman said.
Everybody is an immigrant, Dalager said. His family migrated from Norway, but years ago policies were different, he said.
"My cousin went to country school and the school board went to her house and said she had better talk English before they sent her to school," he said. "Today they're bending over backwards. You've got to hire two teachers," one that speaks English and one that speaks Spanish.
Paul Westrum of Albert Lea believes in "a common- sense approach to our immigration policy."
He was invited to Tuesday's luncheon by Gutknecht.
"If we don't do something about this immigration issue, we're going to lose our country as we know it," said Westrum, who has researched immigration issues for nearly a decade.
This fact alone should be enough to alarm anyone who loves our country -- that is everyone except GW.
* ahem *
Unless something is done quickly, the immigration issue, legal and illegal but especially illegal, is going to overshadow practically every other issue in our polity: from health care to education to taxes to language policy to affirmative action ad infinitum. It's going to destroy our national polity, our national sovereignty, our national language, our national unity. No amount of hypothetical "economic prosperity" that such immigration is (deceitfully IMHO) projected by open borders shills to bring is going to be worth that.
Somewhat RELATED TOPIC:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1467861/posts
"Security fears grow at Southwest border"
The Boston Globe ^ | August 21, 2005 | Brian MacQuarrie
Posted on 08/21/2005 3:02:13 PM PDT by MassRepublicanFlyersFan
I'd have two proposals:
First, tax money transfers to Mexico at 25%.
Second: Children only get US citizenship if both of their birth parents are US citizens, or if they're naturalized.
(And of course, throw illegals out immediately)
Immigration is such a sure way to destroy this country.
Tancredo's guest worker bill has a provision that denies citizenship when both parents are illegal.
Keep reading. The news only gets better.
Mexico, U.S. must solve immigration problem
August 19, 2005
The Pew Hispanic Center in Washington reports that there are 10.3 million illegal immigrants in the United States today. More than half, 57 percent, are from Mexico. The largest concentration - 25 percent of the total - is in California. From 2000 to 2004, 2.4 million Mexicans immigrated into the United States, 85 percent illegally.
We need to consider that our welfare state subsidizes and encourages illegal immigration and distorts social behavior in the fact that any illegal woman giving birth here produces a welfare-qualifying U.S. citizen. Fertility rates among Mexican immigrant women are 40 percent higher than among women in Mexico.
Free schools, free emergency health care, subsidized housing, government-mandated Spanish. We are creating a large and growing unassimilated and dysfunctional subculture within our borders for which we and the victims will pay an ever-increasing price.
snip
Yeah really, those people who came through Ellis Island were worthless(rolling eyes).
keep making the moronic comments and fail to differentiate between illegal and legal immigration. Every time you speak, you hurt your side.
I like your ideas and agree with them. However our gutless politicans (with the exception of a handfull) will never, ever do it.
I'm thinking it sure be more than that! Just having both of the parents legal should not a criteria. Both parents can arrive on a tourist visa and be here legally.
I would go more for both parents as legal residents or at least one parent a U.S. citizen.
Uh bunnyslippers there, dante in his reply #9 said all immigration brings down countries.
I just pointed out the fact that dante thinks people who came through Ellis Island were worthless and brought the US down.
If a couple hundred volunteers can make such a huge difference, imagine the difference we could make if the President came to his senses and decided to stop illegal immigration with federal money and more trained agents. Seems like it wouldn't take another "Great Wall of China" and 50,000 agents to get the job done after all.
Just an aside, can anyone tell me exactly why President Bush turns a blind eye to illegal immigration, especially as we live under the constant threat of terrorism these days? Could it be he worries about his legacy, and doesn't want to be known as the first President to erect borders around our country?
no, he just said immigration. Like your pal bayourod, you always- ALWAYS twist it so people talking about illegal immigration are made to sound like they're talking about ALL immigration.
It's your M.O.
You, bayourod, and the gun grabbers all have that in common- you distort what people have said, you use some stories and ignore all others - because it's the only way you can prop up your losing arguments. But like the gun grabbers, more and more people are seing through it. The tide is starting to turn, and your side is going to be swept under...just like the gun grabbers.
And you know who you have to blame for that? Not the anti-illegal immgration crowd as much as YOU - the people who make the same, lame, offensive arguments (those who oppose you are racists, etc) that just turn off people on the fence and move them from undecided to our side of the issue.
So, thanks again, and keep up the good work. It's always nice to have an opponent whose 'best efforts' amount to little more than shooting themselves in the foot.
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