Where you from, homes?
Posted on 09/19/2002 3:34:04 PM PDT by Sweet_Sunflower29
DENVER (AP) - A congressman who has been demanding tighter immigration controls is defending himself against allegations that illegal immigrants remodeled his basement. Two employees of a contracting company say they and other illegal immigrants from Latin America helped install a home entertainment center and a bedroom in the Littleton home of Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., The Denver Post reported Thursday.
Last month, after the Post wrote about a young illegal immigrant's struggle to pay for college, Tancredo reported the teen and his family to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
On Thursday, Tancredo said that when the remodeling was done last fall, he never asked about the workers' immigration status.
Even if the workers were in the country illegally, "what is my responsibility at this point in time?" Tancredo said in a telephone interview from Washington. "I go to dinner at restaurants and probably have come into contact with people who are here illegally. I do not ask, of course. It is actually illegal and you can be sued."
The contractor, Creative Drywall Designs, and subcontractor Denver Audio Design said all their employees are in the country legally.
The newspaper said it would not identify the workers because they could get in trouble with INS.
Tancredo said enemies he made in lambasting the INS and in seeking strict enforcement of immigration laws are trying to discredit him.
"The fact is that I am a controversial figure," he said. "I have rankled the feathers of people who are immigration support groups and illegal immigrants themselves, so I am not surprised that somebody might make this accusation to embarrass me."
Tancredo called the INS after reading about honor student Jesus Apodaca and his family, illegal immigrants from Mexico who live in Denver. The congressman said INS officials told him they did not have the resources to try to take the family into custody.
Tancredo has pushed for use of troops to guard the borders.
"It is the government's responsibility to enforce our immigration laws, and if the INS were doing its job, no illegal immigrant would be available to violate our labor laws," Tancredo said in the Post.
He got burned? How did he get burned? It looks to me as if he has successfully shined the light on the despicable Mexican government monster that it operating within our borders every day trying to squeeze every benefit out of U.S. citizens it can get to benefit it's hordes of wretched lawbreaking invaders.... all of whom ought to be in jail. He's also shined the light on the worthless INS... the agency that should have had Apodaca and his parasitic kin out of here on the same day the audacious Denver Post published the "gimme gimme...and gimme some more" infomercial for this idiot bloodsucker. Why hasn't the INS removed this whiner and his family of sponges? You'd be surprised just how many solid votes upholding the law can generate.
Honor student? Ha! Send him back to his homeland. They could use at least one honorable person down there.
Or, the workers do not exist...
You see, the paper did give the contractor's name. If they were interested in protecting their sources they wouldn't have mentioned the name of the company, because they know full well the company will be investigated and the names of the alleged workers would be found by the INS. The pesky payroll things- the company would have to say who worked on the job that day.
Can you not understand this? I have explained it twice now.
Tancredo is not LEGALLY responsible, but he made a stupid political mistake by not being more cautious.
If I were trying to get make-up prohibited because I thought it was a health hazard and I had made that a part of my campaign, I wouldn't let myself be caught in a beauty salon, even if all I was doing was getting a hair-cut.
Was he home when they did the installation? The problem I have is that a DemocRATic contolled Administration passed the bill requiring identification of hirees to show they are not illegal aliens. So the lawyers formed a corporation known as a 'Subcontractor". "Subcontractor" illegals don't report themselves and the contractor is off the hook. (Hummm, maybe the Republican controlled Congress had a finger in this too.) When INS shows, the whole corp disappears, and a new one "arrives".
God Bless America (I can still use both of those nouns, I hope.)
1. The paper has found illegals who have at some point worked for the drywall contractor.
2. The contractor is not going to admit that he hired illegals.
3. Tancredo, because he didn't check with the employer ahead of time, is caught in the middle.
4. This was a trap waiting to happen because of his stand. It falls into the "people who live in glass houses, etc." realm.
5. Tancredo should have realized, given his constant criticism about the numbers of illegal aliens, that using a drywall contractor might open himself up to risk of hiring illegals. He should have gotten a sworn statement from the contractor.
This is a political mistake, not a legal one.
Where you from, homes?
Bad night?
Could you please post instructions on just how Joe Homeowner can perform "minor background checks" on an individual's immigration status?
Exactly right MI. The open borders lobby appears to be working around the clock to "Bork" Tancredo into irrelevancy. This whole story is a contrived childish smear to attempt to silence one of the few members of Congress that has the courage to stand up against illegal immigration and the business interests that support it. That's what happens when someone goes against the status quo in this country today.
Clintonism is alive and well in certain quarters of our political establishment.
Poohbah your story seems to be changing yet AGAIN. I remember you saying on a number of occasions that the Silver Bullet to end illegal immigration was to enforce employer sanctions against those who hire illegal aliens (you never got an argument from me on that). Now, according to you, the only solution is to somehow miraculously reform an intractable corrupt foreign government to our way of liking.
Poohbah much like Luis your stories seem to change to fit the circumstance...and like Luis you have no credibility. When it comes to illegal immigration you consistently take the side of the open borders crowd.
Try as you might, you can't hide that.
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