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Chris Christie on Immigration |
CHRSTIE: After spending seven years as a former federal prosecutor, right after 9/11, dealing with this issue-- Here's the way you need to deal with it. You can't just ban all Muslims. You have to ban radical Islamic jihadists. You have to ban the people who are trying to hurt us.
CHRISTIE: They're not, my point was that this is again a situation where the private sector laps us in the government with the use of technology. Let's use the same type of technology to make sure that 40 percent of the 11 million people here illegally don't overstay their visas. If FedEx can do it, why can't we use the same technology? And we should bring in the folks from FedEx to use the technology to be able to do it. There's nothing wrong with that. And I don't mean people are packages.
A: There are not enough law enforcement officers, local, state and federal combined to forcibly deport 11 to 12 million people. This is like building a 2,000-mile wall across the border that Mexico is going to pay for. It sounds really good but the question is how? I think the way to do this is E-Verify. If folks new they weren't going to get jobs, they would not come.
Q: And what would you do with the 11 million who are here?
A: We're going to have to come up with a solution that's going to involve using E-Verify as well.
Christie: To build a wall across our entire southern border, that's a simple politician's answer. My plan for the border would be multi-fold. First, it would be to use the [right] type of walling or fencing in certain areas. Second would be to use the type of electronic surveillance that we have available to us both through drones and through other electronic surveillance on the border. Third, of course, is to use Border Patrol officers to be able to do it. And fourth, and most important, is that require every employer in America to use E-Verify. Because these folks are coming to work. And if they're not able to be employed if they come here illegally, if every employer uses E-Verify and if they violate the law, there are fines that are so significant that the profit they make off hiring lower-wage workers and discriminating against American workers won't be worth their while. You'll see a real diminishment of anybody trying to come over the southern border
Christie signed the New Jersey Dream Act, also known as the Tuition Equality Act, in December 2013, allowing undocumented students to pay in-state tuition rates
Since then, however, Christie has backed away from that stance--or at least refused to reaffirm his support for a path to citizenship. In a 2013 interview with ABC, he repeatedly dodged questions about it.
In 2013, Christie signed the New Jersey DREAM Act, which granted undocumented students in New Jersey access to in-state tuition rates as long as they attended high school in the United States for three years.
CHRISTIE: What I favor is fixing a broken system, and the fact is that everybody knows the system is broken. And what Congress needs to do is get to work, working with each other and the president to fix a broken system that's not serving our economy well, not serving our country well.
CHRISTIE: Nationally, they have to fix a broken system. People across the country look at what governors do, like in N.J., where we confront problems, we debate them, then we get to a table, we come to an agreement, we fix them and we move on. And in Washington, that seems to almost never happen.
Q: Do you think that national solution should include a path to citizenship?
CHRISTIE: The national solution has to be figured out by the people who are in charge of our national government. My job is to fix what's going on in N.J. But we're not going to be able to fix all the things we need in N.J. until national leaders set a national immigration policy. That's federal policy that needs to be fixed. It's a broken system, it's not working for the economy, it's not working for the individuals who are affected by it.