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Relevant, must read excerpt from an interview with Duncan Hunter:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1864263/posts?page=89#89

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Irving Baxter: We are interviewing today, U.S. Congressman Duncan Hunter, from California, Republican candidate for President of the United States. We are very happy to have him with us. Congressman, I don’t want to just pound away on a single issue I want to give you a chance to speak to some other things that are very important to you and our nation. But before we leave the immigration issue, I just want to follow up a little bit. So we got an estimate of 12 - 20 million illegals here. I’ll be honest with you, this gives me a mixed feeling because I know some of them. I’ve met them. They are working, some have been here a long, long time. They broke the law to get here. Our government has broke the law to allow them to get here. So I think our government has some responsibility. Do you really think we can require them all to go home?

Duncan Hunter: Well, sure. I think we can. And the point is, going back to Mexico is not the end of the world. Mexico is a wonderful country. It has enormous natural resources. We have put billions of dollars into Mexico to give them an economic shot in the arm.

And you know something else, a lot of folks that come to the United States, who are here illegally, have homes in other countries. Now one reason politicians in Mexico City like the open border, is because people come across and send back billions of dollars. The last figure I saw was between 6 – 10 billion dollars a year, of money that they make in the United States to their real homes, in this case in Mexico. But other people come from lots of other countries. In fact in the year 2005 we apprehended, and these are just the folks we caught, we caught a 155 thousand people coming across the border from Mexico that weren’t just citizens of Mexico. They came from virtually every country in the world, including 1100 folks from communist China and a few folks from North Korea and Iran. So the idea that the guy that got smuggled into this country in December because he had an affective smuggler, has the right to have citizenship in the United States, I can’t accept that.

Once again, a whole lot of folks that are here have second homes or have original homes. To make them an American citizen would basically be giving them 2 citizenships. They would be having the citizenship in their original home, where they send their money and they would now have a citizenship in the United States. The problem with giving Amnesty is this, we gave Amnesty in 1986 for 3 million people. And we said that’s it. No one else can come across. The U.S. Senate put up a little stop sign and put it on the border. That stop sign was promptly run over with Goodyear Tires and you had 12 million people stampede for that border after the 1st Amnesty. If we give a second Amnesty, we will have a third wave of people rushing the border of the United States because that is human nature. You will have people coming over expecting the 3rd Amnesty. Just like people came over the 1st Amnesty saying I’ll come in now, 5, 6, 7 years from now they will have another one and I’ll be legalized. Once you abandon the rule of law you are in real trouble. There is nothing wrong with folks going home and then applying for admission back into the United States. Now if they come from a country where people are in danger of being killed if they go back and that happens sometimes. During the days of the Cold War, and before we brought down the Berlin Wall, there were some very dangerous places. There are still a few of them, where people can’t go back and they probably will be killed if they go back. And we give humanitarian exception for those folks. We have done a lot to spread freedom and economic prosperity around this world if they would take it up.

The other thing is, I think the politicians in Mexico City like the open border because it is a pressure release valve for them. If they don’t take care of their people if they don’t provide economic opportunity, and they don’t, than instead of their voters throwing them out of office they want people to vote with their feet and just leave the country. And that is what they do. They vote with their feet and leave the country and come to the United States. I think there is nothing wrong with letting that pressure build up and result in a changed political system that hopefully results in freedom for the people rather than have them vote with their feet and come to the United States and do another Amnesty.

Irving Baxter: You make wonderful points Congressman. The recent immigration bill that was defeated, I got the impression, that was, although I am not saying we should be for Amnesty I think we would have a huge problem, ….But, I don’t think it Amnesty is what killed that bill. A lot of people say it was an anti Amnesty vote and yet when Kay Bailey Hutchinson presented her amendment that people had to go home and apply and come back that amendment was defeated. It was killed that is not the reason the Senate killed this bill it was when the Balicus (?) Tester amendment came up. And that striped out of the bill, the Real ID provisions. That appears to be what killed that bill. Do you have any comments on that?

Duncan Hunter: You know, it’s hard to tell. Because when you have an amendment that comes up you may have a Senator that votes for the amendment even if he doesn’t agree with it on the basis that it will make the bill so ugly that the bill can’t pass. So it is very difficult to read the motives in the political cross currents when have a bill with a lot of amendments coming up. I think the Amnesty provisions did jam the senate switch boards and I think that’s the issue that convinced lots of Senators to take a second look at this one.

Irving Baxter: Just from Politics and Religion Listeners, we are on the air here everyday, we have huge sentiment against the Real ID Act and against registration issues. People really don’t want to go down that road. I don’t know what all the answer is; but I do definitely believe the fence is a huge answer and we are behind you all the way.

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