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.
We could still have cheap produce without having to resort to using illegal aliens to pick it.
Tancredo's response was a nice piece of Clintonian parsing. Yes, it is illegal to inquire as to the nationality of the contract employee; no, it is not illegal to independently verify the legal status of the employees. The fact that Tancredo offered his excuse in that fashion says that he probably did not want to know in the first place.
From what I've read about Tom Tancredo, he is concerned (not obsessed) with all illegal aliens in the United States. It just so happens that the largest and most visible group of illegal aliens in the U.S. are Mexicans.
Lose whose votes? Those of the pro-illegal immigration Latino Republican voters?
No, the middle-of-the-road folks who don't cotton to people throwing that sort of rhetoric around. It makes it SO much easier for the Democrats to portray Mr. Tancredo as a mouth-breathing sheethead.
You can say the same thing without like you're late for your monthly belligerence meeting.
Tancredo doesn't have enough votes in his district from folks like you to win. It's very rare to find a Republican who does have that luxury.
From the way he answered the questions about why he didn't check, he didn't WANT to know one way or the other.
Probably so. Some group cleverly painted Tancredo into a corner, and no matter how he chose to explain his way out of it, he was made to look less than respectable. Very unfortunate.
Your next sentence needs an edit.
Some group cleverly painted Tancredo into a corner, and no matter how he chose to explain his way out of it, he was made to look less than respectable.
It should read:
Some group Tancredo cleverly painted Tancredo into a corner, and no matter how he chose to explain his way out of it, he was made to look less than respectable.
There are no victims, only volunteers. I've done due diligence on contractors coming to my home. Tancredo needed to do it far more than I did, and he didn't.
When one starts throwing stones, one had better make sure that one's house is made of Kevlar and not glass. It is far easier to avoid the problems in the first place rather than engage in Clintonian word games after the fact.
Like it or not, the liberal media is not going to give a conservative the same pass that
Very unfortunate.
Yeah, his foolishness was very unfortunate, indeed.
I do ask. You choose to NOT ask. It's an important part of screening a contractor.
Fukunaga and several members of his family also run Denver Audio Design, which worked on Tancredo's home theater system, installed during the basement remodeling. Denver Audio currently only has one employee on its payroll, store manager Brett Olkowski, who said he was born in Buffalo, N.Y.
Ah, yes. Only one "current" employee. Have they fired anyone recently?
Olkowski said he and two other men worked on Tancredo's audio system - Jeff Wolff, who was born in Denver, and Brad Brock-Purviance, who was born in San Diego.
They did ALL of the work, huh? No day laborers to do the grunt work?
Sure. Right. Uh-huh.
<snip>
Tancredo, a Republican from Littleton representing Colorado's 6th Congressional District, said he had no evidence that the companies involved in his renovation project did anything wrong, so he planned to take no action.
Why am I reminded of Al Gore's infamous iced tea?
"I have nothing to tell the INS about these two alleged illegal aliens who are felons," Tancredo said.
Hmm. He's suggesting that he knows they're here and they're illegal. "I don't know who they are and I don't even know if they are real people.
Now he doesn't.
"I have no information to lead me to believe the company has done anything wrong.
Coupled with his earlier statement...is it that he doesn't know, or that he doesn't WANT to know?
I don't even know, frankly, that those people really are here illegally. They could be people who didn't even work in my basement, but they despise me."
Interesting. He doesn't know who they are, he doesn't know if they're illegal, but they're felons.
Inconsistencies upon inconsistencies. Something sounds amiss.
Yes, like your claim that you question your contractors about illegal employees.
I check paper on anyone coming into my house to do work.
There's a very technical word to describe the individual who doesn't do that.
That word is "stupid."
You forgot to describe them as "Satanic Forces of Darkness."
This is kinda fun to watch, actually. Does anyone have some popcorn?
I'm going to go have myself a libation...
Then I would imagine that the vast majority of Americans are just as foolish. So apparently the owner of the contracting company that worked on Tancredo's house lied when he denied having any illegal aliens on his company's payroll. I guess we can't trust anybody to tell the truth anymore. Like Reagan said, "trust, but verify", because apparently this isn't our grandfather's United States anymore.
You're right, this is fun to watch. That is, watching all of the Tancredo bashers trying to make a mountain out of a molehill (or maybe an anthill).
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