RICK PERRY WATCH
RICK PERRY WATCH
If you liked George W. Bush on immigration enforcement, border security and amnesty – you would love Rick Perry!
Somebody please send us a note if you ever hear Hannity, Limbaugh or Boortz mention any of the below on Perry.
This page created on September 27, 2011. It took about 2 hours on Google. Additional information (news, quotes and commentary) will be added on the bottom as it is found.
Note to the GOP: Nominate Rick Perry if you want pro-enforcement, anti-amnesty, independent voters – including this one – to stay home in November 2012. He is as bad for America’s future as Comrade Obama.
Let’s make clear something the American media never will: “Immigration” — legal or illegal — is not somehow a separate, unconnected issue from jobs, taxes, national security, education, health care, general quality of life or common national language and values.
Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry on open borders:
“President Fox’s vision for an open border is a vision I embrace, as long as we demonstrate the will to address the obstacles to it. An open border means poverty has given way to opportunity, and Mexico’s citizens do not feel compelled to cross the border to find that opportunity.”
Texas Governor Rick Perry, 2001 HERE
IN 2007 he suggested offering renewable, 24-month visas for those who follow such requirements and “incarceration and/or deportation” for those who do not. ( note from DIS: we have deportation laws now for illegals, why not enforce them, you know – NOW ?)
He added that, under such a system, he would support a “free flow of individuals between these two countries who want to work and want to be an asset to our country and to Mexico.” HERE
This open borders/free flow of labor concept may sound familiar to some readers – but completely new and fantastic to most. The media works very hard to insure that it is not widely known. Open borders has been a major demand of many in the business community for decades (“cheap” labor you know, increased markets and decreased tariffs. Sovereign nations are outdated and a detriment to increased profit) – not to mention the political, academic and media elite on both the left and the right.
A few examples:
“THERE SHALL BE OPEN BORDERS” – The Wall St. Journal 1984 HERE
“Open the Borders” – Reason Foundation HERE
Open Nafta Borders? Why Not? WSJ – again July 2, 2001 HERE
SIN FRONTERAS ORGANIZING PROJECT ( WITHOUT BORDERS ORGANIZING PROJECT!) HERE
OUR OPINIONS: Bush, Fox should pursue union similar to Europe – The Atlanta Journal Constitution September 7, 2001 HERE
Rick Perry on protecting American workers with use of the federal no-cost E-Verify system. Texas has no E-Verify requirement, despite having one of the highest populations of illegal aliens in the nation.
“E-verify would not make a hill of beans’ difference in what’s happening in America today.” Perry said in a 2010 debate. HERE
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Perry on bi-national health care. With Mexico.
“…Legislation authored by border legislators Pat Haggerty and Eddie Lucio establishes an important study that will look at the feasibility of bi-national health insurance. This study recognizes that the Mexican and U.S. sides of the border compose one region, and we must address health care problems throughout that region. That’s why I am also excited that Texas Secretary of State Henry Cuellar is working on an initiative that could extend the benefits of telemedicine to individuals living on the Mexican side of the border…”
Texas Governor Rick Perry speaking at a 2001 U.S. – Mexico border summit. HERE from the right, HERE from the left.
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Amnesty…er, “guest worker” plans:
Rick Perry, 2006: “I support a guest worker program that takes undocumented workers off the black market and legitimizes their economic contributions without providing them citizenship status,” Perry said in 2006. “A guest worker program that provides foreign workers with an ID removes the incentive for millions of people to illegally enter our country.”
Amnesty, by another name. We already have “guest worker” programs and import a million and a half temporary workers each year – in addition to more than one million permanent legal immigrants – we also have 9% unemployment and around twenty-five million Americans out of work. Please read the entire Perry written article HERE
More?
Perry opposed an Arizona-style immigration law for his state, saying it “would not be the right direction for Texas.” Because it would turn police officers into immigration agents he complains (duh), a mindless talking point taken directly from La Raza and the Chamber of Commerce. And the Restaurant Association. And the construction lobby. And the Ag lobby. And the hotel and landscaping industries. HERE —
MEXICO CITY (AP) – Texas Gov. Rick Perry criticized the U.S. Congress on Tuesday for failing to make progress on immigration reform, suggesting its members lack “maturity” and calling the proposed construction of a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border “idiocy.”
Perry was in Mexico City on a trade mission intended to strengthen Texas and Mexico’s economic ties through trade, investment and energy initiatives, especially renewable energy.
“I don’t think this is that difficult of an issue if Congress would have the maturity to sit down and really discuss it and cut out all of the mean rhetoric and really talk about what is a solution to this issue,” Perry told a news conference.
HERE
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MORE?
Taxpayer-subsidized, in-state tuition for illegal aliens.
Perry signed the Texas Dream Act in 2001 making it the law in Texas. “We must say to every Texas child learning in a Texas classroom, ‘We don’t care where you came from, but where you are going,’” Perry said. “The message is simple: Educacion es el futuro, y si se puede.” Perry still supports the measure.
He has yet to explain why Texas taxpayers must fund college education for illegal aliens who are ineligible for employment upon graduation.
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Rick Perry on a workable border fence? Nope:
“No, I don’t support a fence on the border,” “The fact is, it’s 1,200 miles from [Brownsville to El Paso, Texas]. Two things: How long you think it would take to build that? And then if you build a 30-foot wall from El Paso to Brownsville, the 35-foot ladder business gets real good.”
Rick Perry, 2011 HERE
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This from David Frum: Perry’s Immigration Problem: Even Bigger than it Looks
“Some will interpret Perry’s relaxed views on immigration as a rare indication of a more humane side to the otherwise hardline Texas conservative. Maybe.
But here’s another way to understand Perry’s stance:Texas has pursued a distinctive economic strategy: drive down all costs of doing business, especially including wages.
Texas workers receive some of the lowest wages in the nation; by some metrics, the very lowest. The encouragement of heavy unskilled immigration from Mexico and central America is an integral – even indispensable – element of the Texas low-wage job-creation strategy.
Perry’s views on immigration are not a “liberal” deviation from his views on the minimum wage, on Social Security, on healthcare coverage, etc. His high-immigration views are of a piece with his general preference for a low-cost, low-wage economy.
By contrast, Mitt Romney has begun to articulate a call for a high-wage economy. To get average wages rising again after a dozen years first of stagnation, then of outright decline, will not be easy. The most important step is to control healthcare costs. The rising cost of healthcare benefits devours workers’ cash pay.
But a rethink of immigration policies is also necessary. In the September 7 debate, Romney articulated something almost never said in a Republican primary: much, much, much more important than a fence or “boots on the ground” is tighter enforcement of labor laws inside the country. I’d go further: if the labor laws were effectively enforced, a border fence would be a costly redundance.
Why have labor laws gone so badly enforced? In very large part: because Rick Perry’s donors don’t want them enforced. The National Restaurant Association does not want them enforced. The construction industry does not want them enforced. Meatpackers do not want them enforced. The hotel and landscaping industries do not want them enforced. When you hear Republican candidates complain of “burdensome regulation,” keep in mind that the regulations that many small businesses find most “burdensome” are those intended to reserve American jobs for American legal residents.
On that issue, Gov. Perry has been, is now, and continues to be an advocate of laxer rules to promote more immigration in order to hold Texas and ultimately American wages low.”
HERE
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Center for Immigration Studies
Who Benefited from Job Growth In Texas?
A Look at Employment Gains for Immigrants and the Native-Born, 2007 to 2011
By Steven A. Camarota, Ashley Monique Webster
September 2011
HERE—
More: NRO
Mark Krikorian
Most jobs in Texas went to new immigrants both legal and illegal
Remember all those new jobs in Texas Governor Perry keeps talking about? Would it surprise you to learn that the overwhelming majority went to newly arrived immigrants and not to Americans? Surprise! From 2007 to 2011, 81 percent of the job growth went to recently arrived foreign workers — about half legal, half illegal. Nor did all this wonderful job creation for foreigners seem to benefit Americans indirectly — native-born Texans saw the same doubling of unemployment that Americans elsewhere experienced during the recession. So, to the extent Perry has anything to do with all this — and he’s the one boasting of his role in making it happen — his main accomplishment seems to have been to dissolve the workforce and elect a new one. Maybe this is what the plantation owners want, and certainly their immigrant laborers aren’t complaining, but what’s in it for the rest of us?
HERE
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Here are some Perry-facts from the Jacksonville, Ill., Courier-Journal:
“Texas has the second-highest poverty rate among the 50 states, behind only Mississippi. It has the second-highest percentage of population without a high school diploma. Texas leads the nation in the percentage of people with no health insurance, over one quarter. It is tied with Mississippi for having the biggest percentage of workers paid at or below the minimum wage.”
Rewarding illegal aliens:
“Such misery didn’t stop Perry from successfully pushing for in-state tuition for illegal aliens in Texas’ post-secondary education system in 2001. Perry never explains why he was forcing Texans to subsidize college education for people who cannot lawfully work in the USA. He did make his “feelings” clear on his action. “Educación es el futuro, y sí se puede.”
Sound familiar?
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“In last week’s Tea Party debate in Florida, when confronted by fellow Republican presidential candidates for rewarding illegal immigration with state benefits, Perry’s shameless reply was the typical race-baiting, misdirection offered up by the radical leftist, anti-enforcement mob “The bottom line is it doesn’t make any difference what the sound of your last name is …” he whined. The topic was illegal immigration. Nobody mentioned anyone’s name.
Read more: The Marietta Daily Journal – D A King Perry record on immigration abysmal
Rick Perry’s record on immigration isn’t as bad as I thought. It’s worse!
HERE
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Rich Lowry
National Review
Rick Perry’s border problem
Rick Perry stumbled through much of the last Republican debate, but not when speaking about immigration. He issued a clarion condemnation of critics of his state’s policy of giving the children of illegal [aliens] in-state tuition to college. Such naysayers, Perry declared, lack “a heart.” — The Texas governor prides himself on his distinctness from George W. Bush, yet on this issue he sounds just like him…
ADDED 28 September: I didn’t know that American Patrol had already built a Rick Perry Watch page when I did this one. You can see Glenn’s HERE
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ADDED 5 October 2011
Howard Foster — Frum Forum
Who pays for the illegals in Texas?
Illegal [aliens] cost the State of Texas (including its local governments) $8.8 billion per year. This is a staggering sum of money brought about by a steady flow of illegals obtaining public education, criminal justice, and medical care. It amounts to nearly 10% of the State’s total annual expenditures of approximately $90 billion. And 60,000 children of illegal [aliens] are born in Texas