Tom Tancredo rips Bush

Tancredo slams Bush over immigration

By Kevin Landrigan

The Nashua Telegraph (NH),

September 25, 2007 http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/articleAID=/20070925/NEWS08/309250087/-1/news08

Nashua -- Republican presidential candidate Rep. Tom Tancredo, of Colorado, said President Bush's failure to enforce existing immigration laws is 'despicable' and leading to a domestic crisis.

If elected, Tancredo, 61, said he'd ask Congress to require the withdrawal of Social Security taxes from all employee wages to make it easier for the federal government to track and deport illegal aliens.

'If we don't like our immigration laws, if we think they are wrong, repeal them. If we don't think they are wrong, enforce them,' Tancredo said during an interview with The Telegraph editorial board at Nashua High School South.

'Don't keep ignoring our laws, which this president has been doing, which is despicable,' Tancredo said.

To Tancredo, Bush's failure to crack down more on employers who employ undocumented workers and to maintain border security amounts to a high crime. 'If he could be impeached for dereliction of duty, a bill could be brought. Unfortunately, that is not grounds,' Tancredo said.

'He has avoided dealing with this issue to a point where we are at a crisis, I believe, and it is just unconscionable.' A six-term congressman, Tancredo said illegal immigration has become the centerpiece of his campaign, due to the role it's played in rising health-care costs, availability of jobs and crime.

'It is the most serious domestic policy we face, it has enormous ramifications for America, legal or illegal immigration, period, because of the lack of assimilation that has occurred,' Tancredo said.

Employers need to increase the wages of the low-skill jobs instead of hiring illegal immigrants, Tancredo said. He insisted the private economy cost for such a move would be lower than the costs of educating and caring for those who are here illegally.

Tancredo said an illegal alien serving in the military should be placed on a path to citizenship, but all other undocumented citizens must return to their former home. 'I have compassion for people who have done it the right way,' Tancredo said.

On Iraq, Tancredo said after this November, U.S. combat forces should disengage from serving as that country's police force and redeploy much of its troops elsewhere in the Middle East. 'I think we'll have to be in Iraq proper, in the oil fields. The numbers I don't know yet,' said Tancredo who serves on the House International Affairs Committee.

Tancredo defended his statement on a Florida radio talk show in 2005 when he favored 'taking out' Muslim holy sites if he learned fundamentalist extremists used nuclear weapons to attacks the U.S. 'What can you do to create a deterrent? I put this out there as a proposal,' said Tancredo, adding he's received death threats in response to it. 'You have to think what is motivating them . . . I think they are acting because of a religious interpretation they have of Islam.' Dave Burgess, of Hudson, a member of The Telegraph Reader Advisory Network, asked if the attacks against Iraq and Afghanistan were justified based on the terrorist attacks against the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, even though al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has not been captured. 'I think the response against the Taliban in Afghanistan was absolutely appropriate,' Tancredo responded. 'To call Iraq a response to 9-11 is inaccurate.'

A former junior high school teacher and federal education official, Tancredo said the U.S. role in public schools should be limited, the reason for his opposition to the federal No Child Left Behind law. Tancredo supports converting federal spending to education block grants for the state and taxpayer-financed vouchers that let parents pick the public, private or parochial school of their choice. 'I want to focus on the kid and not the system,' Tancredo added.

Consumers should be able to buy their own health insurance with the help of tax-free health savings accounts rather than get it primarily through their private employers, Tancredo said.

And he supports President Bush's threatened veto of the House-passed expansion of the Child Health Insurance Program for the states. After the interview, Tancredo spoke and then took questions from social studies students in the school auditorium.