Posted on 05/18/2007 10:31:35 AM PDT by EternalVigilance
GIULIANI: And I think that, you know, we're going through a very serious debate on immigration and I think that I look at it from the point of view of how do we create more security for the United States? How do we, in an era of a war on terrorism, which is going to continue for the indefinable future, and then some of the other problems that we have, how do we create more security? And I think that either extreme is not the right answer.
One extreme is what I would call the punitive approach, which is reflected in the House legislation that was passed, which is to make it a crime to be an illegal or undocumented immigrant; it is illegal now but it's not a crime and I believe, if I recall correctly, that it would make it a five-year felony and there are 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States. It would become a law that was honored in the breach and it could not possibly be enforced.
To give you the dimensions that I remember, at least when I was the Mayor, it's estimated that there are about 400,000 people in that category in New York, it could be more now but it used to be about 400,000. The Immigration and Naturalization Service, I believe, deports about 1,500 to 2,000 people a year so I pretty quickly figured out that I was going to have 398,000 illegal immigrants no matter what the federal government did and I had to do something sensible about it rather than something stupid and kind of make it work in the society in which we exist.
Well, that's really the picture for the whole country and to deal with it in a punitive way is actually going to make us considerably less secure than we already are because the problem is that we have such a huge underground that we can't really keep account of who's here, who they are, identify them, and kind of separate the ones that are here for benign or neutral purposes, which we can argue about the competitiveness and the economy and everything else, but they're not really doing damage to our society, might even be making vast contributions to it, and then focus on the people that we have to focus on who are the people that might come here to carry out terrorist acts or to sell drugs or to commit crimes and the reason we can't do that well is that we have a system already that's unenforceable, that's unrealistic given the numbers of people that want to come here, the size of our borders, the number of resources that we could conceivably have to apply to it.
So the right answer is to do the things that have to be done to secure our borders, introduce new technology, require more of people in describing who they are, identify them effectively, fingerprint them or finger image them if you have to, photograph them, come up with cards for them, use the modern methods that we presently have for identifying people but don't try to legislate against the inevitable forces of, you know, social movement and the economy because it isn't going to work. So we have to find a way and I think that the compromise the Senate was looking at something along those lines makes sense.
Give people a way to earn citizenship, give them a way to earn citizenship in which they have to demonstrate facility with English and they have jobs and they're paying taxes and they've put themselves in an entirely legal status, recognize the economic forces that are realistic ones that require people to come into the United States or require people to have people come into the United States, and you identify them and you have them pay taxes and you find out who they are and then you concentrate on the people who are avoiding that and you'll be capable of doing that because it'll be a problem the dimensions of which you can touch and feel and measure and see and it'll be much harder for terrorists to hide in a situation like that.
And I think that the Manhattan Institute, which sort of turns on trying to figure out the logical and sensible answer to a problem, can play a big role in getting us to think about immigration in a way that it is sensible and it gets us to a resolution that makes us more secure because I think that going in either extreme is going to hurt us.
Anything you can be incarcerated for, if found guilty, is a crime. 6 months incarceration is the penalty in the U.S. Statutes for coming across the border illegally for the first time. The sentence can get stiffer for repeated violations. Illegal aliens are, by definition, criminals.
Hmm, according to Romney's words in a 2005 Boston Globe interview, "That's very different than amnesty, where you literally say, 'OK, everybody here gets to stay,' " Romney said in the interview. "It's saying you could work your way into becoming a legal resident of the country by working here without taking benefits and then applying and then paying a fine."
The article goes on: Romney did not specifically endorse McCain's bill, saying he had not yet formulated a full position on immigration. But he did speak approvingly of efforts by McCain and Bush to solve the nation's immigration crisis, calling them "reasonable proposals."
Seems like he was for it before he was against it. That seems to happen often with Massachusetts politicians...
Must read. Ouch
McCain AND Rudy are toast.
Too Funny! Good job!
You know that everyone keys on the first few words. The technique you used is significantly misleading -- close enough to a lie to be called a lie, imo.
The Real Rudy Giuliani:
From Human Events:
Pro-Illegal Immigration
As Tom Bevan of RealClearPolitics has pointed out, Rudy is an adherent of the same approach to illegal immigration that John McCain, Ted Kennedy, George Bush, and Harry Reid have championed: "While McCain has taken heat for his support of comprehensive immigration reform, Rudy is every bit as pro-immigration as McCain - if not more so. On the O'Reilly Factor last week Giuliani argued for a "practical approach" to immigration and cited his efforts as Mayor of New York City to "regularize" illegal immigrants by providing them with access to city services like public education to "make their lives reasonable." Giuliani did say that "a tremendous amount of money should be put into the physical security" needed to stop the flow of illegal immigrants coming across the border, but his overall position on immigration is essentially indistinguishable from McCain's."
That's bad enough. But, as Michelle Malkin has revealed, under Giuliani, New York was an illegal alien sanctuary and "America's Mayor" actually sued the federal government in an effort to keep New York City employees from having to cooperate with the INS:
"When Congress enacted immigration reform laws that forbade local governments from barring employees from cooperating with the INS, Mayor Rudy Giuliani filed suit against the feds in 1997. He was rebuffed by two lower courts, which ruled that the sanctuary order amounted to special treatment for illegal aliens and were nothing more than an unlawful effort to flaunt federal enforcement efforts against illegal aliens. In January 2000, the Supreme Court rejected his appeal, but Giuliani vowed to ignore the law."
If you agree with the way that Nancy Pelosi and Company deal with illegal immigration, then you'll find the way that Rudy Giuliani tackles the issue to be right down your alley.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE OF GIULIANI'S LEFT-WING POLITICAL POSITIONS
I can’t help it if you’re too lazy to read to the end of a sentence.
Not really.
We need to send the former Mayor a half-million copies of Funk & Wagnalls.
He would have made an comedic character on Laugh In.
Hey ... once your start you can't stop, can you?
Credit where credit is do.
That’s a funny picture.
You betcha!
“Can anyone explain this to me?”
Only with illogical, circular logic. It’s like voting for the bill, before you vote against it.
Ask the mod to put 2006 at the beginning of the sentence if your tender sensibilities are so injured.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.