Thompson sounds strong on illegal immigration

A reader sent this Fred Thompson radio commentary (audio here) with the note: “Laura Ingraham took this as Thompson’s sign he is getting really serious about being the true conservative candidate.”

Southern Exposure

By Fred Thompson
March 20, 2007

We are all very well aware of the fact that we have an illegal-immigration problem in this country. As usual, we avoided the problem for as long as we could and when we couldn’t avoid it any longer we were told that, indeed, somewhere between 12 and 20 million people had somehow come into this country unnoticed.

It’s like we went overnight from “no problem” to a problem so big that it now defies a good solution. It’s become one of those “there are no good choices only less bad choices” that Americans are becoming all too familiar with.

We know that the overwhelming majority of illegals come across the Mexican border. Fortunately, we’ve got someone who is all too willing to tell us what we should do about it—the president of Mexico Philipe Calderon. President Calderon doesn’t think much of our border policies. He criticizes our efforts to secure the border with things such as border fencing. He says that bottle necks at U.S. checkpoints hurt Mexican commerce and force his citizens to migrate illegally in order to make a living (and of course send money back to Mexico). He apparently thinks we should do nothing except make American citizens out of his constituents. Calderon also accused U.S. officials of failing to do enough to stop the flow of drugs in to the United States. Mexican politicians gave President Bush an earful of all of this during his recent trip to Mexico.

I think its time for a little plain talk to the leaders of Mexico. Something like:

Hey guys, you’re our friends and neighbors and we love you but it’s time you had a little dose of reality. A sovereign nation loses that status if it cannot secure its own borders and we are going to do whatever is necessary to do so, although our policies won’t be as harsh as yours are along your southern border. And criticizing the U.S. for alternately doing too much and too little to stop your illegal activities is not going to set too well with Americans of good will who are trying to figure a way out of the mess that your and our open borders policy has already created.

My friends, it’s also time for a little introspection. Since we all agree that improving Mexico’s economy will help with the illegal-immigration problem, you might want to consider your own left-of -center policies. For example, nationalized industries are not known for enhancing economic growth. Just a thought. But here’s something even more to the point that you might want to think about: What does it say about the leadership of a country when that country’s economy and politics are dependent upon the exportation of its own citizens?

Since our side (i.e., normal American people) is so desperate for an immigration-control candidate who would have more of a chance than Tancredo (who is my man), I hesitate to repeat my cautions about Thompson. But I must, because it seems to me that people who have not paid much attention to him in the past are fooling themselves about him. Based on his strikingly dull (that would normally be a contradiction in terms, but not in Thompson’s case) performance as a U.S. senator, especially as seen in his leadership of one of the key investigative committees back in the nineties, I think it is very unlikely that he would shape up as a competitive presidential candidate. Maybe I’ll be proved wrong, I hope I am, but I don’t want people to get their hopes too high for someone who I think is so unpromising.

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Sage McClaughlin writes:

Regarding Fred Thompson’s stand on immigration, I think you should listen to his interview with Laura Ingraham.

I think what you’ll find is that he is employing slightly more robust rhetoric than most Republican senators have been on this issue—he certainly positions himself to the right of those execrable open borders fanatics, McCain and Giuliani. He does this by stressing “enforcement first,” and suggesting a little bit of tough talk with Mexican officials on the integrity of out southern border. But he still suggests that we may need even more immigration (from such places as India, presumably) of foreign students specializing in technical fields. Obviously, my preferred solution would be to push very hard to increase our own native intellectual capital in the sciences, and that reduced foreign immigration would be a major benefit thereof.

What Thompson is suggesting, really, is that there really are jobs that Americans won’t do—it’s just that they happen to be highly specialized and lucrative. Well, that’s just great.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 25, 2007 03:40 PM | Send