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Candidates debate immigration issues

By Jessica Robertson
Baytown Sun

Published October 19, 2006

EDITOR’S NOTE: Second in a series of issues confronting congressional candidates vying for office in the Baytown area. Today, we examine their views on immigration. On Friday, the candidates will sound off on Social Security.

Immigration reform legislation proved to be a divisive issue in Congress this year, and with early voting for the Nov. 7 midterm elections less than a week away, candidates for districts in the Baytown area again find themselves debating what should be done.

Although there is not definitive data on how many undocumented immigrants are in the United States, most estimates show that between 8 million and 12 million families are living illegally in the country.

This month, Congress approved and Bush signed a bill for a proposal to build a 700-mile fence along the Mexico border. The bill provided $1.2 billion for the project, which is estimated to cost $8 billion.

U.S. District 29

For U.S. Rep. Gene Green, D-Houston, constructing a wall is not fiscally responsible. Rather than proposing a realistic solution for the immigration problem, he said, Congress has been using it as an election platform.

“I think we’ve been playing politics with the issue,” Green said. “For the last six months, Congress hasn’t been willing to sit down and work at a comprehensive immigration reform. It’s become a political issue the last number of years. Anytime you get close to the election, people are looking for issues that differentiate them from the opponents. It doesn’t make for good law, necessarily, just for good sound bytes.”

One of his opponents, Republican Eric Story, said he would have supported the fence project and contends that the issue was brought to the political forefront because illegal immigration has been a “major drain” on the economy.

Story, a minister who has worked in the oilfield industry, said his first priority would be to control all airports, waterways, and northern and southern borders.

“This is not, as many try to make it look, a racial thing,” he said. “This has nothing to do with Mexico or Mexicans. It’s about national security and sovereignty.”

The biggest problem with the current policy, Story said, is that illegal immigrants have been able to quietly and freely break the law for decades.

“That’s why most Americans are upset — not so much that there are people here but that our government is not fulfilling its responsibility to enforce current laws that are on the books,” he said.

Libertarian candidate and air condition technician Clifford Lee Messina said he sees two flaws with the current immigration policy — an easy-to-manipulate welfare system that draws people to the country and the inability of people to get into the United States legally.

The recent debate over illegal immigration, he said, stems from a “mass exodus” of Mexicans entering the United States. The country’s infrastructure is not prepared to handle such an influx, he said.

“Our infrastructure is not designed to hold so many people,” Messina said. “The freeways are jammed, energy costs are going up and gas prices are getting higher. It’s just getting worse.”

Messina said he would support a policy that requires immigrants to enter the country after submitting to background checks and being tested for diseases. His plan would also prohibit immigrants from receiving welfare and require them to put up a cash deposit to cover anything that could happen while they were in the United States.

A lawyer who formally served in the Texas House of Representatives, Green said his focus is on a comprehensive plan that requires those who have entered the country illegally to pay a fine and undergo background checks before applying for legal citizenship.

“Historically, our country is a nation of immigrants,” he said. “We have to remember that tradition, but we also need to realize that it hurts our country if we have uncontrolled immigration. My fear is not somebody coming in and trying to get a job. It’s someone coming in and wanting to harm people in the United States.”

Building a fence along southern borders in Arizona and California may be practical, he said, but in Texas, the Rio Grande may be sufficient protection. Story disagrees.

“Three million people a year, at the minimum, cross that river, so obviously it’s not a deterrent,” he said.

A guest worker program that awards temporary visas to immigrants, he said, could work if it is in fact a temporary program, not one that gives a “fast track” to citizenship.

Before supporting a guest worker program, Green said he wants to see Congress appropriate more funds to staffing border patrol agents.

U.S. District 14

Incumbent U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, an obstetrician/gynecologist whose district includes Chambers County, voted for the Border Protection Act, a tough border enforcement bill overwhelmingly opposed by Democrats.

The bill adds border patrol agents, creates border fencing, increases border surveillance and makes illegal entry into the country a felony.

Congress first must physically secure all borders and coastlines, Paul said, before contemplating a guest worker program.

“No immigration reform is possible until we gain control over our borders,” he said. “Right now, we must gain control over who is coming into our country. Once we have secured control over our borders, we can begin to address whether certain industries truly need foreign labor and how many guest visas would be appropriate.”

Paul’s Democratic opponent, Shane Sklar — a rancher from Edna — said the solutions proposed by Congress in the last year have not been enough to correct a decades-old problem.

“For the last 20 years, nobody has done anything about it,” he said. “It’s a situation that continues to grow. The leaders in Congress now are guilty for not having done the work they should have several years back.”

A guest worker program, he said, could work but cannot be implemented until the borders have been secured. The issue, he said, is similar to being in a boat filling with water.

“We’ve got two choices to fix this — either start trying to dump that water out with buckets or plug the leak,” he said. “Plugging the leak is where we start. Everything else is secondary.”

While Paul is strongly opposed to amnesty and calls it a “reward for lawbreakers,” Sklar said he favors a path to citizenship for illegal workers.

“These people need to have an opportunity for a path to legalization but because they did break the law, they should go to the back of the line rather than go ahead of anyone going through the proper route to legalization,” he said.

The proposed fence, Sklar said, is both a “waste of taxpayer dollars” and “political posturing.”

“This country has a reputation for tearing down walls across the world,” he said. “Why would we want to erect one here? I would hate to see us be one that brings one up,” he said.

U.S. District 2

U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, a freshman Republican and former Harris County felony court judge, calls himself a “strong supporter of border security” and voted for the proposed 700-mile border fence.

Still, he said, a fence must be combined with additional border agents, Texas sheriffs and interior enforcement of laws.

“Currently, illegals know that once they get past the border patrol, they are home free,” Poe said. “We protect the borders of other countries; we should protect our own.”

One of his opponents, Democratic candidate and Kingwood water utility manager Gary Binderim, said the Secure Fence Act of 2006 was nothing more than a political ploy.

“I think this border fence was all just a big show to try and scare people, and then look like they actually did something,” he said. “They appropriated a lot of money to build a fence that probably won’t even get built, and if it does, it probably will not have a great effect on the flow of undocumented workers who cross our southern border.”

As the policy stands now, he said, illegal immigration keeps wages low and hospitals and emergency rooms crowded. His solution is to attack the issue from the employer side and require business owners to verify job applicants’ Social Security numbers through an online tracking system.

The problem, he said, is not new and in its most recent form, is pandering to “racist” voters.

“It’s just an effort by a lot of Republican congressmen to get re-elected,” Binderim said. “That was a very big part of this crusade, trying to portray a problem that has existed during my entire lifetime, as an invasion of our country similar to the Pearl Harbor attack. All it is fear mongering and scare tactics that try to appeal to people on a racist basis.”

For Poe, the issue is clearly defined between lawful immigration and illegal immigration.

“The law doesn’t acknowledge race; it applies to everyone,” he said. “It has nothing to do with where they came from but how they got here.”

He introduced legislation in 2005 that would require anyone entering the United States to present a passport.

“Under current law, people entering the U.S. from Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean Islands can use over 8,000 types of identification documents,” he said. “Passports are more efficient and secure. Passports will enable us to record the entry of people into the United States, as well as their departure.”

Libertarian candidate Justo J. Perez, who was born in Cuba in 1961 and immigrated to the United States that year, said the immigration debate has been confused with national security issues.

“They are mixing immigration from Mexico across the border with concerns of national security,” he said. “Somehow, I think people feel that if our borders are porous to Mexicans, they’re porous to terrorists. I doubt a wall or stronger immigration laws are going to keep out terrorists. After all, the terrorists who hit us on 9/11 were here legally with visas.”

Perez said he would support a policy that allowed both Mexicans and Canadians to live and work freely in the United States without visas. A simple tax credit on their passports would require them to pay taxes and increase the legal labor pool, he said.