Published: 1 day ago
Scott Greer
World Net Daily

Former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo hailed the news Wednesday that legislation that would grant citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants is effectively dead and deemed it an early Christmas gift to the American people.

“What happened as a result of tossing this out this time, we gave a Christmas gift to every single citizen of the United States, who prizes the concept of citizenship,” Tancredo stated to WND.

He said this in response to reports that the outspoken Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., called on Congress to pass amnesty in time for the holidays.

Tancredo, a 2008 GOP presidential candidate, believes that if amnesty had passed, it would have undermined the strong attachment that America places on citizenship and would have rendered it meaningless.

“If it had passed, the whole notion of citizenship…as an extremely important part of who we are as Americans would’ve been severely diminished, in fact, it would’ve become meaningless,” declared Tancredo, who has written about such threats to America in “In Mortal Danger: The Battle for Amerca’s Border and Security.”

He said that he was pleasantly surprised that the Speaker of the House John Boehner declared that the House of Representatives would not hear any immigration legislation this year when he had stated that it was one of his primary goals. He credits conservatives within the GOP caucus for defeating any attempts to pass amnesty in the Republican-controlled House.

“It is somewhat of a surprise, because I know that Boehner’s main goal is to ‘get this off his plate.’ So there must’ve been an enormous reaction inside the caucus against any plan that would’ve advanced amnesty’s agenda,” Tancredo believes.

Tancredo believes that conservative media blowing the whistle on the plan to advance amnesty through piecemeal legislation that would have appealed to Republicans and the subsequent backlash toward that strategy ensured amnesty’s failure.

But, ultimately, Tancredo credits the constituents who strongly voiced their opposition to amnesty to their respective representatives for being the primary reason amnesty isn’t expected to pass this year.

“The John Q. citizen conservative voter knew what the game was and communicated that to their respective congressperson and in doing so, it made all of those people recognize that it was fraught with political peril to pursue it,” Tancredo said.

The former congressman believes that those who support amnesty aren’t giving up on the fight and will just wait for another opportunity to pass the controversial legislation.

“What it says to them is ‘let’s put this on the back burner for awhile.’ These people are never going to stop, each of them for their own reasons…but they are not going to go away. We have to remember that, though this is an important win, we haven’t won the war,” Tancredo cautioned.

He also warned that Republicans who championed amnesty, such as Sens. John McCain and Marco Rubio, have learned no lessons from this fight and will continue to support amnesty once it is more appropriate to do so.

“Those folks are now licking their wounds and trying to figure out a way to say that this wasn’t their idea anyway. But it doesn’t tell them to shut up. You’ve got to understand that these people think that they are all smarter than the rest of us. So they will rationalize this as ‘it’s just a bunch of people who don’t understand the issues, they’re a bunch of political cretins, we’re all so much smarter, and we’ll just bide our time and this too shall pass,’” Tancredo commented.

But he still feels that this great news for the average American, as Tancredo believes it would have spelled disaster for our country if it had passed.

“It is, of course, a huge burden that is being lifted from the American people, certainly for conservatives who recognized the disaster that amnesty would’ve caused,” Tancredo stated.

Tancredo is currently running for the Republican nomination for governor of Colorado and currently has a strong lead in the most recent poll over his competitors in the GOP and is virtually tied with the Democratic incumbent John Hickenlooper in the same poll.

Tancredo’s book, “In Mortal Danger,” pulls back the curtain on the agenda that produced immigration protests starting in 2006 and continuing.

Millions have marched in cities from Los Angeles to Atlanta, demanding blanket amnesty for illegal aliens under the banner of “immigrant rights.”

They insist rights now afforded legal immigrants should be granted to those here illegally. Anything short of that was condemned as “racist.”

Tancredo warns, too, that years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the U.S. government still has done virtually nothing to secure America’s borders.

He lays out the case that unless the United States changes course, it is headed toward catastrophe. Like the great and mighty empires of the past – “superpowers” that once stretched from horizon to horizon – America is heading down the road to ruin, he suggests.

http://www.wnd.com/2013/11/killing-a...ft-to-america/