Topics in the News: Illegal Immigrants
JD Vance on Immigration
: Oct 2, 2024
Make it harder for illegal aliens to undercut wages
JDV: We've got 20, 25 million illegal aliens who are here in the country. I think the first thing that we do is we start with the criminal migrants. About a million of those people have committed some form of crime in addition to crossing the border
illegally. I think you start with deportations on those folks, and then you make it harder for illegal aliens to undercut the wages of American workers. A lot of people will go home if they can't work for less than minimum wage in our own country.
TW: Fifteen hundred new border agents, detection for drugs, DOJ money to speed up these adjudications on this. Just what America wants. But as soon as it was getting ready to pass and actually tackle this Donald Trump said "No," told them to vote
against it because it gives him a campaign issue. It gives him, what would Donald Trump talk about if we actually did some of these things? And they need to be done by the legislature. You can't just do this through the executive branch.
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Source: 2024 Vice Presidential debate: Tim Walz vs. JD Vance
JD Vance on Immigration
: Oct 1, 2024
Illegal migrants use CBP One app to apply for asylum
WALZ: Senator Vance vilified a large number of [Haitian] people who were here legally in the community of Springfield. The Republican Governor said, "It's not true."VANCE: In Springfield and all across this country, you've got schools and hospitals
that are overwhelmed,; you've got housing that is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes. The people that I'm most worried about in Springfield, Ohio, are the
American citizens who have had their lives destroyed by Kamala Harris's open border.
WALZ: This is blaming migrants for everything.
Q: To clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status:
Temporary protected status.
VANCE: Since you're fact checking me, the CBP One app where you can go on as an illegal migrant, apply for asylum or apply for parole and be granted legal status at the wave of a Kamala Harris open border wand.
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Source: 2024 Vice Presidential debate: Tim Walz vs. JD Vance
Donald Trump on Immigration
: Mar 7, 2024
Illegal alien invasion: hordes resettled in your community
Over the past 3 years, Biden has actively aided and abetted the importation of millions and millions of illegal alien migrants and resettled them into your communities. At ANY TIME during the past 3 years, Crooked Joe Biden could have called off the
invasion--but to this day, he is keeping the hordes of illegal migrants and illegal aliens pouring into the country. By the time his term is up, we could have close to 20 million people in our country. We have no idea from where they come, we have no
idea who they are. They have no identification. Many come from mental institutions, many come from prisons, they're terrorists. The VERY FIRST BILL Joe Biden sent to Congress was a plan to turn illegal aliens into voting citizens.
That's just what we need. No matter what Crooked Joe says, his actions prove his priority is to import a colossal new illegal alien population and let them all stay--my priority is securing our border, and sending Crooked Joe's illegals back home.
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Source: Trump Prebuttal to 2024 State of the Union address
Nikki Haley on Immigration
: Jan 10, 2024
Border crossers are families, not criminals: but e-Verify
DESANTIS: Do not trust Nikki Haley with illegal immigration--she's on tape at the Aspen Institute saying it's disrespectful to illegal aliens to say that they're criminals. Q [to HALEY]: Gov. DeSantis and also Donald Trump are attacking you for that
comment in 2015 in which you said undocumented immigrants should not be called "criminals." The full context is you said, We don't need to talk about them as criminals. They're not. They're families that want a better life, and they're desperate to get
here." Do you still feel that way?
HALEY: When I was governor, we passed the toughest illegal immigration law in the country. In passing that toughest illegal immigration law in the country, we passed E-Verify, which I want to take national, which is
where businesses have to prove that the people they hire are in this country legally. I passed it within six months of being governor. Ron didn't pass it for five years. He only waited to pass it when he decided to run for president.
Click for Nikki Haley on other issues.
Source: CNN 2024 pre-Iowa caucus one-on-one debate
Ron DeSantis on Immigration
: Jan 4, 2024
Children born here to illegal immigrants aren't "anchors"
DeSantis said, "The 14th Amendment obviously applies to U.S. citizens. It was never the intended to say, you come illegally across the border, have a kid, and all of sudden, the kid is an American citizen? That creates an anchor in the society so that
you then can't deport the illegal aliens who came in. It's an incentive to come illegally. When people are coming illegally, they do not have a birthright at that point."[DeSantis is proposing to overturn a Supreme Court precedent from 1898]:
Fact Check by The Guardian, Mar. 16 2020 Children born on US soil can't just immediately safeguard their family members from deportation. A US citizen must be 21 years old before they can sponsor their parents for a green card. Even if parents do
get a green card, they have a five-year holding period before they can finally apply for naturalization. In the end, the so-called "anchor baby" pathway to citizenship is at least a 26-year endeavor, even for those who entered the US legally.
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Source: Guardian FactCheck on CNN Town Hall 2024 pre-Iowa caucus
Donald Trump on Immigration
: Mar 4, 2023
I will sign a colossal increase in ICE deportation offices
Millions of illegal aliens are stampeding across our border. Interior enforcement has been shut down. Everyone is overstaying their visas. My wonderful travel ban, it was so wonderful. Refugee numbers are through the roof and spies and terrorists
are infiltrating our country, totally unchecked. When I'm back in the White House, the very first reconciliation bill that I will sign will be for a massive increase in border patrol and a colossal increase in the number of ICE deportation offices.
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Source: Speech at the 2023 CPAC Conference in Maryland
Ron DeSantis on Immigration
: Feb 28, 2023
Hispanics support robust border and immigration enforcement
During my first year in Congress, the divide between the DC GOP and our Republican voters back home was on stark display on the issue of immigration. The Republican intelligentsia inside the
Beltway believed as an article of faith that, to win national elections, Republicans needed to embrace amnesty for illegal aliens.I've found that most
Hispanics support robust border and immigration enforcement measures and are not terribly sympathetic to those who enter the United States illegally.
DC Republicans supported major expansions of immigration to serve corporate interests, particularly
in ways that would facilitate more cheap labor. The effect that such policies might have on the wages of American workers did not seem to be much concern--a classic example of Beltway Republicans putting Americans last.
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Source: The Courage to be Free, by Gov. Ron DeSantis, p. 51
Donald Trump on Drugs
: Feb 7, 2023
Drug cartels smuggle poison to kill our children
Here's the real State of the Union: Over the past two years under Biden, millions and millions of illegal aliens from 160 different countries have stormed across our southern border.
Drug cartels are now raking in billions of dollars from smuggling poison to kill our people and to kill our children, savage killers, rapists and violent criminals are being released from jail to continue their crime wave.
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Source: Trump recorded prebuttal to 2023 State of the Union speech
Ron DeSantis on Immigration
: Jan 11, 2022
Re-route illegal aliens in Florida to sanctuary states
As a state, we cannot be a party to what is effectively a massive human smuggling operation run by the federal government. Companies who are facilitating the movement of illegal aliens from the southern border to Florida should be held accountable,
including by paying restitution to the state for all the costs they are imposing on our communities. I am also requesting funds so that when the feds dump illegal aliens in Florida, the state can re-route them to states that have sanctuary policies.
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Source: 2022 State of the State Address to the Idaho legislature
Donald Trump on Immigration
: Jul 11, 2021
Border is the single greatest disaster in American history
Now the Biden administration has turned the border into the single greatest disaster in American history, and perhaps in world history. Nobody's ever seen a border like this. Other countries don't have a border like this.
Illegal border crossings are up over 1,000% from last year. For the last three months in a row, more illegal alien minors have arrived than any other month in United States states history.
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Source: Speech transcript from 2021 CPAC Conference
Mike Pence on Immigration
: Sep 22, 2020
Require temporary workers to learn American language
According to a Mike Pence press release, "'And if they come under the color of the law, we must require temporary workers to learn the language of the American people." [Congressional Press Releases, 5/15/07]
"The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that twelve million illegal aliens are currently living in America. Just a few months ago, that estimate was eleven million.
In a few more months or years, that estimate will grow to thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, twenty or more million illegal aliens, unless we do something to turn the tide.
And, we must do something because this is a problem of epic proportions. It is a problem that threatens the very fabric of America." [Congressional Press Releases, 5/23/06]
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Source: Trump Research Book on Mike Pence
Donald Trump on Immigration
: Feb 29, 2020
Countless Americans are killed every year by criminal aliens
Illegal immigration costs American taxpayers hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars a year, funds that could be used to improve our schools, roads, hospitals, and other vital services. Instead, Democrats want to take even more of your
money to give illegal aliens free healthcare, free federal welfare, free education. They get treated better than they want to treat our military and our vets. And I stopped it. But it's crazy.
The Democrat Party's immigration policies empower bloodthirsty cartels that maim, murder, and torture; that smuggle and traffic innocent human beings; that flood our communities with poisonous drugs. The Left's immigration policies are not
compassionate; they are heartless, merciless, and cruel. Countless Americans are killed every year by criminal aliens. These are illegal aliens that come in, and they are, in many cases, very bad people.
Click for Donald Trump on other issues.
Source: Remarks by President Trump at the 2020 CPAC Conference
Kamala Harris on Immigration
: Aug 11, 2019
Hold companies liable for hiring non-citizens, not workers
Q: How to stop companies hiring illegal aliens?HARRIS: Of course, the employers have to be responsible. They have to do whatever is required by law. But there's another point here, which is that this administration has directed DHS to conduct these
raids as part of what I believe is this administration's campaign of terror, which is to make whole, whole populations of people afraid to go to work. Children are afraid to go to school for fear that when they come home, their parents won't be there.
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Source: Meet the Press interview for Democratic 2020 Veepstakes
Joe Maldonado on Immigration
: May 15, 2018
Pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens
Q: Do you support or oppose the statement, "Pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens"?
A: Yes.
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Source: OnTheIssues interview of 2018 Oklahoma Governor candidate
Donald Trump on Immigration
: Oct 9, 2016
Border agents endorsed me because I understand the border
We have many criminal illegal aliens. When we want to send them back to their country, their country says we don't want them. In some cases, they're murderers and drug lords. And they don't want them. Clinton as secretary of state said "That's OK,
we can't force it into their country." I'm going to force them right back into their country. They're murderers and some very bad people. The Border Patrol agents, 16,500, just recently endorsed me, and they endorsed me because I understand the border.
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Source: Second 2016 Presidential Debate at WUSTL in St. Louis MO
Mike Pence on Immigration
: Jul 15, 2016
Return to country of origin before illegals get citizenship
Pence's record in the House: Pence supported proposals to allow illegal aliens to gain legal status, even while denying that such policies amount to amnesty. During the 2007 debate on amnesty legislation, Pence originated the idea of requiring illegal
aliens to leave the country and then being permitted to return legally--an idea that Donald Trump has flirted with during the course of his presidential campaign. Pence voted against the DREAM Act amnesty and generally championed measures aimed at
enforcing immigration laws.Pence's record as Governor: Pence has had to deal with the effects and the costs of our nation's failed immigration policies. He publicly blamed Obama administration policies for the surge of unaccompanied alien minors
entering the US. In addition, he challenged Pres. Obama's illegal use of executive power to grant de facto amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, joining with Texas & 24 other states in a lawsuit that blocked two sweeping Obama executive amnesty programs
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Source: FAIR website, ImmigrationReform.com on 2016 Veepstakes
Donald Trump on Immigration
: Nov 3, 2015
351,000 criminal illegal aliens in our prisons
In 2011, the Government Accountability Office reported that there were three million arrests that could be attributed to the incarcerated alien population, including tens of thousands of violent criminals.
There were 351,000 criminal illegal aliens in our prisons--that number does not include the crime of crossing our borders. It costs us more than a billion dollars a year just to keep these people in prison.
I understand that the vast majority of these people are honest, decent, hardworking people who came here to improve their own lives and their children's lives. Nonetheless, illegal immigration has to stop.
A country that can't protect its borders isn't a country. We are the only country in the world whose immigration system places the needs of other nations ahead of our own. There is a word to describe people who do that: fools.
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Source: Crippled America, by Donald Trump, p. 21-2
Nikki Haley on Immigration
: Apr 3, 2012
Audit businesses to see if using E-Verify
We already had a strong anti-illegal immigration bill when I became governor. All I wanted to do was enforce it. Our law required businesses to prove they weren't hiring illegal aliens by using, among other methods, a federal database called E-Verify.
The problem is, for E-Verify to work government has to know whether employers are actually using it. Obama's Department of Homeland Security told us we could no longer audit businesses to check if they were using E-Verify. The privacy of the people
being checked, they said, would be compromised if we asked for proof from businesses. Out of the more than 6,000 businesses they had checked, over 2,000 violations had been found. But no more. Now the federal government was saying that we couldn't use
the best and most efficient means we had to enforce our law.
My goal wasn't to overburden employers with rules and regulations. I just wanted to use the easiest and least costly way, to ensure we weren't employing illegals, and that was E-Verify.
Click for Nikki Haley on other issues.
Source: Can't Is Not an Option, by Gov. Nikki Haley, p.211-212
Donald Trump on Immigration
: Dec 5, 2011
Anchor babies were NEVER the intent of the 14th Amendment
The root cause of all the welfare payments to illegal aliens is the so-called "anchor baby" phenomenon, which is when illegal immigrant mothers have a baby on American soil. The child automatically becomes an American citizen,
Though this was NEVER the intention of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states, "All citizens born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the state wherein they reside."
The clear purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, three years after the end of the
Civil War, was to guarantee full citizenship rights to now emancipated former slaves. It was not intended to guarantee untrammeled immigration to the United States.
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Source: Time to Get Tough, by Donald Trump, p.140-141
Donald Trump on Immigration
: Dec 5, 2011
351,000 illegal aliens are in our prisons; costing $1.1B
America's prisons house 351,000 criminal aliens who committed a crime after having already broken the law by entering American illegally.
Making taxpayers pay for 351,000 criminals who should never have been here in the first place is ridiculous. The annual price tag to incarcerate these thugs is $1.1 billion. And get this: criminal aliens have an average of seven arrests.
That's at least seven crimes committed against American citizens by each of these criminals who should never have been allowed to cross our borders.
One out of every three federal prison inmates is a Latino, and three quarters of these are here illegally.
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Source: Time to Get Tough, by Donald Trump, p.136
Nikki Haley on Immigration
: Nov 2, 2010
Co-sponsored toughest standard of immigration enforcement
We are a nation of immigrants but we are also a nation of laws. It is vitally important that the United States maintains its sovereignty through the process of legal immigration. Nikki has twice co-sponsored legislation that represents the toughest
standard of immigration enforcement on the books nation-wide. In 2007, H4400 provided for such programs as E-verify and expanded the ability for state and local law enforcement to question, detain, and transport suspected illegal aliens and traffickers.
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Source: 2010 Gubernatorial campaign website, nikkihaley.com "Issues"
Mike Huckabee on Drugs
: Dec 30, 2007
1999: doubled methamphetamine sentences
Q: Has Mitt Romney said anything that's untrue about you?A: How long do we have on the program today? He's said many things that are untrue. He said that I reduced methamphetamine sentences in Arkansas. Truth is I signed a bill in 1999 that doubled
those sentences. We did not reduce them. Our sentences were four times harsher than they were in Massachusetts. He said that I supported special breaks for illegal aliens. That's not true. We supported simply giving children who had earned a scholarship
the same--it never happened, it didn't make the legislature. He made allegations that our increased spending by ridiculous amounts, and The New York Times came back and defended that, and said that's just simply not true.
And they took him apart and showed that the increases in spending were, frankly, the same if not a little better than his if you took into consideration the accounting methods we changed in Arkansas, very modest gains in spending.
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Source: Meet the Press: 2007 "Meet the Candidates" series
Mike Huckabee on Immigration
: Dec 13, 2007
FactCheck: Yes, supported scholarships for AR illegal aliens
Romney's Iowa TV ad portrays Romney's immigration stance as hard-line compared with Huckabee's. It's true that a plan Huckabee supported would have granted in-state tuition rates and eligibility for scholarships to any student who had attended an Arkansa
public high school for at least three years, regardless of immigration status. It's also true that Romney vetoed a similar bill in 2004. But Romney's illegal immigrant bashing is of fairly recent vintage.In 2004, the Boston Globe reported that
Romney was reluctant to veto the tuition proposal--and not at all the certain, sure-footed decision maker portrayed in the ad. At the time, Romney said, "I hate the idea of in any way making it more difficult for kids, even those who are illegal aliens,
to afford college in our state."
Romney wasn't a hardliner on immigration until late in his tenure as governor. None of the specifics presented here are false, but the ad presents a black-and-white contrast that doesn't exist in reality.
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Source: FactCheck's AdWatch of 2007 campaign ad, "The Record"
Joe Biden on Immigration
: Dec 4, 2007
FactCheck: 67% of illegal aliens speak Spanish; not 40%
Biden's discussion of his search for a nanny years ago led him into trouble. Biden said, "Most of the illegals that came to seek a job with me, they did not speak Spanish. They were from Ireland, England. They were from Germany.
They were from Poland. The majority of the people here undocumented--60%--are not Spanish speaking." Chris Dodd jumped in and confirmed that most illegals are, in fact, Spanish speakers. Biden wisely deferred to Dodd.
In fact, Mexico was the country of birth of 57% of the estimated 11.55 million unauthorized immigrants in 2006. Add in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras--all Spanish-speaking countries--and it jumps to 67%.
You'd have to go back many decades to get to a time when the majority of undocumented immigrants were Britons, Germans, Irish and Poles.
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Source: FactCheck on 2007 Democratic radio debate on NPR
Page last updated: Dec 08, 2024
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