Blackburn, Bredesen differ on DACA, immigration
SAM STOCKARD Aug 1, 2018 Updated 10 hrs ago
Democratic United States Senate candidate Phil Bredesen is seeking some “moral sense” from pastors about potential solutions to immigration and its impact on America. But Republican candidate U.S. Rep Marsha Blackburn appears to have her mind set.
Bredesen, the former two-term Tennessee governor and Nashville mayor, met July 23 with pastors from across the state in an effort to draw “practical ideas” from the group and get away from national campaign rhetoric. And while he is still putting together a comprehensive plan on the issue, he says the group he met with in Murfreesboro had a “very strong feeling” about protecting the border and controlling immigration there compared to coming up with solutions for people who migrated here years ago and are “members of our different communities.”
“I think they saw those very clearly as two very different issues, and that was helpful to me,” Bredesen says.
The Rev. Dan Scott of Christ Church Nashville on Old Hickory Boulevard says he is most concerned about “maintaining enough civility” in the debate about how to handle immigration.
“We have to have borders. A nation cannot be a nation without borders. But even the people that are trying to get in don’t even know the laws. They aren’t consciously breaking a law, they’re not criminals. That’s a crock,” Scott says. “They’re not criminals; they’re just poor people trying to get a better life.”
Even when America turns immigrants away, Christians must feel compassion and not “demonize them,” Scott says, and he notes the nation should feel the same about those who’ve been here for years.
Likewise, Bredesen believes the nation has a “moral obligation” to the “dreamers” and DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) students, those brought here illegally as young children by their parents.
“They speak English. They have no more connection to Mexico or Guatemala than I do, and leaving these young people in limbo the way they are now, so it’s hard for them to plan their lives under threat of deportation … or deporting them back to a country that’s not theirs and they don’t know, to me would be a terrible un-American kind of thing to do,” he says.
Bredesen considers DACA to be the easiest immigration issue to solve and says a “broad consensus” exists to give them stability and help them achieve citizenship.
Blackburn, on the other hand, takes a hardline stance on illegal immigration and says Democratic policies such as those by Bredesen have “encouraged” illegal immigration and made the job of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) more difficult.
“Marsha believes unilateral executive actions, such as DACA, offer the false hope of amnesty that led to a surge of illegal immigration,” says Blackburn campaign spokeswoman Abbi Sigler. “President (Barack) Obama’s ‘pen and phone’ approach used illegal aliens as pawns in a political game, circumvented congressional authority and cemented his legacy of lawlessness.”
Furthermore, setting new immigration policy by executive order is “anti-democratic” and leads to an unsustainable and unenforceable immigration system, Sigler says.
Obama put DACA into effect to give students a two-year period of amnesty, but President Donald Trump canceled the program this spring. The matter is tied up in a legal fight and could be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Congress has two related bills to consider but hasn’t taken any action. Blackburn’s spokeswoman says lawmakers need to set “clear and long-term solutions to the immigration problem.”
But setting policy on “dreamers” isn’t the only facet of immigration where Bredesen and Blackburn differ.
Bredesen says the roughly 12 million illegal immigrants in America pose a much more “complicated problem” than the 800,000 “dreamers” here. They aren’t quite as “innocent” as the children because they made a conscious decision to come into the country illegally, but they’ve become part of the nation as “neighbors,” the people seen in church and at grocery stores, Bredesen says.
“I think some process by which that can be regularized and if somebody is willing to learn English and pay their taxes and not have convictions for serious crimes … I think we owe them some sort of a path to become permanent residents and possibly citizens,” he says.
Asked about that part of the issue, Blackburn’s spokeswoman continues previous criticism dished out at Bredesen in which the congresswoman accused his policies of making Tennessee “a magnet for illegal aliens from other states seeking Tennessee state-issued valid drivers’ certificates.”
During a campaign stop in East Tennessee earlier this year, Blackburn blamed Bredesen for signing legislation enabling illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses. That bill was signed by his predecessor, Gov. Don Sundquist. But she continued to pile on by pointing out Bredesen opted for a change in the state law by allowing illegal immigrants to get a driver certificate.
That policy was designed to ensure they knew the rules of the road, but Bredesen stopped it when he found out it was becoming a problem. Sigler points out Blackburn voted against giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants when she served in the state Senate before winning a congressional seat.
Following Trump
“Phil Bredesen and his friend Hillary Clinton oppose building President Trump’s wall. Marsha Blackburn has always fought for the rule of law and strong interior enforcement,” Sigler says. “She opposes federal funding for sanctuary cities and believes that we must support ICE as they work to deport criminal illegal aliens, combat child trafficking and conduct operations against MS-13 gangs. Marsha Blackburn will stand with President Trump to enforce our immigration laws.”
Bredesen calls building the wall, which is estimated to cost as much as $20 billion, “political theater.”
“I think you do need to control the border,” he says. But with the amount of money it would take to construct a wall, Bredesen says the U.S. could do “amazing things” with electronic surveillance and other enforcement to be more effective.
Building a wall at the southern border would take years to complete, he adds, noting, “If there’s anything we’ve learned about things like walls is they get porous.”
Bredesen says he has “no tolerance,” however, for gang activity such as that perpetrated by MS-13 and says those types of perpetrators should be jailed and deported. Yet he says those make up only a very small part of the immigrant population and focusing on them instead of the large number of “very religious” immigrants is a mistake.
Splitting families
The former governor refers to the policy of removing children from their parents during the judicial process for asylum as “child abuse.” It is part of the “zero tolerance” policy the Trump Administration set up for people trying to enter the country illegally.
The Trump Administration has argued the policy of separating parents from children will stop people from entering the country. Yet many of them are entering America in an effort to escape gangs and economic repression in their own Central American countries, according to reports.
“There’s no rational reason for doing that,” says Bredesen, who thinks the situation has gotten even worse since the nation found out children were being separated from parents and “shuffled off” to different places.
Federal judges have ordered an end to the process and set standards for reuniting children with parents. Bredesen says he wants to see that expedited and for this type of separation to “never happen in this country again.”
Blackburn stands by a previous statement on the matter, saying her “heart breaks” for families separated at the border.
“No one wants to see families separated, and this practice needs to end. We are in this position because liberals would not pay to enforce our immigration laws or build appropriate facilities for asylum seekers,” Blackburn says.
She also contends “liberal judges” ruled children could not be kept with their parents, a “lapse in judgment” that put the nation in a difficult position of deciding whether to enforce laws or keep families united. Blackburn says she is pleased with executive action taken by President Trump but that Congress “must work on a permanent legislative solution.”
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