Chris Christie Wants To Track Immigrants Like FedEx Packages
"We need to have a system that tracks you from the moment you come in."
Posted: 08/29/2015 03:45 PM EDT | Edited: 8 minutes ago
Sam Levine
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) on Saturday revealed a plan to curb unauthorized immigration: track anyone who enters the country from the time they receive their visa, like a FedEx package.
At a New Hampshire town hall, the presidential hopeful lamented that 40 percent of the undocumented immigrants in the United States entered on legal visas that they had overstayed.
"So here's what I'm gonna do if I'm president. I'm gonna ask Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx, come work for the governor for three months. Just come for three months to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and show these people," Christie said, drawing laughter from the crowd.
"We need to have a system that tracks you from the moment you come in," he continued. "And then when your time is up...then we go get you. Tap you on the shoulder and say excuse me, thanks for coming, time to go."
Christie's campaign did not immediately return a request for comment.
FedEx uses barcode technology and unique tracking numbers to keep track of shipments, with each package scanned an average of 13 times between dropoff and delivery, said FedEx spokeswoman Jennifer Caccavo. She declined to comment on Christie's plan.
Earlier this month, Christie called for a re-examination of birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants born on United States soil.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b0b7a963393e0a
Chris Christie Campaign Defends Immigration Visa Reform
by Charlie Spiering
1 Sep 2015
When New Jersey Governor Chris Christie proposed a plan to use modern private sector tracking technology to improve the visa process in America, liberal critics predictably freaked out.
The campaign insists that Christie’s comments were more about the principal of using modern technology to solve government problems.
“Clearly the Governor is talking about leveraging private sector innovation and technology to address government inefficiency and to help solve some of our country’s biggest problems, including knowing when individuals overstay their visas,” said Christie’s Communications Director Samantha Smith to Breitbart News. “It is also important to note that there is broad bipartisan support in Congress for a high-tech system to modernize the visas process in the United States.”
During a town hall event in New Hampshire, Christie said: “At any moment, FedEx can tell you where that package is. It’s on the truck. It’s at the station. It’s on the airplane. Yet we let people come to this country with visas, and the minute they come in, we lose track of them.”
The idea sent journalists in a tizzy, as some even compared it to the U.S. government internment of Japanese Americans in World War II.
Christie has used this example before in town hall meetings in New Hampshire, receiving a positive response from conservatives who’re concerned about the U.S. government losing track of visa holders who end up staying illegally in the United States.
Smith is also the daughter of FedEx president and CEO Fred Smith.
The idea is not foreign to the presidential debate, as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich frequently brought it up in the 2012 Republican primary.
“There are an estimated 11 million people here illegally and the federal government can’t find them while they’re sitting still,” he joked in 2011. “One of my proposals is that we send everybody a package.”
At the time, Gingrich defended it as a joke pointing out that he was merely using the rhetoric to show how hapless government had become on an important issue.
He used the example again during a 2012 CPAC speech, as the delighted crowd of conservatives applauded.
“Let me say for my friends in the news media that that was hyperbole, and we don’t need a fact check,” Gingrich added at the time.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...n-visa-reform/
