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.
So be it.
If this is the case.........Rudy just lost the election.
“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”
What rubbish! They talk about “securing the border” but what they want to do is leave the border porous, and rely on so-called technology and new beuracracies to find illegals after they get here. Are we supposed to believe they will do anything differently than they do now (ie: deport only a few per cent of them)? Or is it up to the “honor system” of hoping illegals come forward?
Hasta La Vista Julie Annie - take McClown with you on the way out!!!!
And don’t forget that the fine for using a social security number fraudulently is VERY steep. If we enforced those laws already on the books by going after employers, there would be more than enough in the kitty to build a secure border.
I saw the 2006 in the headline. Your critics here can read more carefully. Not much diff in the 2006 amnesty bill and the 2007 amnesty bill. (Pay $5000 to become citizens? Yeah, right!)
Happy?
Julyani is in a free fall and he doesn’t even realize it.
The funny part is that I followed the rules and didn’t change the headline from the source. :-)
Where do Rudy’s votes (poll numbers) come from? I know of noone that personally supports him.
I try to be. And you?
Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey, goodbye.
See ya, Rudy.
..[pause] a mental insitution, michael [pause]. maybe its something you ought to think about ..[chair swivels]
My bad...I just read the thing...haha. Oh well, never too many links.
Good bye Rooty! You just lost any chance of getting the GOP nomination.
Hey Rockin,
I was bracing myself for the eventuality of having to vote for the Mayor. No es problemo anymore. This is a pretty hot issue right now and can vault the guy with the right angle on illegals to the top of the pile.
I seriously have to question any potential candidate’s inability to read the tea leaves on this; in addition to being on the wrong side of the arguement it’s just poor judgement. Such a candidate could not be trusted to make sound judgements as President.
I don’t know about Romney and his flip flops. I got my fingers crossed for Senator Fred, but I’m afraid that Rudy is no mas.
That does it for me. Anyone but Rudy and the nut job from AZ.
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