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This Week’s Candidate: Chris Bell Candidate for Governor running against Rick Perry, incumbent, Carole Keeton Rylander; Independent and Kinky Friedman; independent.
Chris Bell submits the following statement of position on border security and immigration reform
The debate over immigration reform and border security is among the most divisive issues in the current political discussion. Cynical politicians are treating immigration as nothing more than a wedge issue to win votes and play to voters‚ fears instead of proposing real, common sense solutions.
Rick Perry‚s answer is to turn border security into an online video game. Others argue that the answer is to spend billions of dollars that we don‚t have on a 20-foot-high wall that won‚t accomplish anything but create a huge market for 21-foot-high ladders.
It‚s time for a new discussion about border security and immigration reform, a discussion that rejects the dead-end politics of division and instead seeks out common sense solutions to the challenges we face along the border.
Securing our Border
The very first priority in addressing illegal immigration needs to be securing our border. The simple truth is that federal government has failed in this mission, and Rick Perry has been far less aggressive then other border governors in meeting this challenge. It‚s time for Texas to step up and restore order on the border.
That‚s why Chris Bell supports the deployment of the National Guard to the border. Chris called for Texas to take this step months before President Bush echoed his call. Chris has pointed to the example of states like Arizona, where Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano took the initiative and committed the Arizona National Guard to the border while Rick Perry sat around and did nothing.
Local law enforcement agencies in Texas border cities will be the first to tell you that they have plenty on their plate without having to serve as full-time border control agents as well. If the federal government won‚t provide the manpower to secure the border, then we ought to turn to the National Guard for backup, not local law enforcement.
Cracking Down on Illegal Hiring: There are already federal laws on the books that make it illegal for business to knowingly hire undocumented workers. But too often in Texas, these laws are not enforced. What‚s worse, the federal government actually ties our hands so that the state of Texas can‚t aggressively prosecute companies that exploit undocumented workers.
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