Thread: Hunter takes on Columbia, Richardson

Hunter takes on Columbia, Richardson
Democrat blasted on immigration

By KATE DAVIDSON
Monitor staff


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September 25. 2007 12:20AM

California Rep. Duncan Hunter isn't happy about what New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has said to voters about border security, and he made a quick campaign stop in New Hampshire to give his side of the argument.

Hunter, a Republican running for president, defended the use of a fence to reduce crime and quell illegal immigration along the Mexican border, a plan that Richardson, a Democrat, has said won't be as effective as beefing up border patrols and working with the president of Mexico.

"I know Mr. Richardson has been in New Hampshire saying that the fence does not work and that's why he's not for it," Hunter said in a telephone interview yesterday. "I wanted to rebut that statement."

In a meeting with students at New England College, Hunter also condemned administrators at Columbia University for allowing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to visit their campus yesterday before a scheduled address to the U.N. General Assembly.

Hunter arrived in the state Sunday night to attend an event in Nashua celebrating the Constitution, and he met with students at New England College in Henniker yesterday morning. He then headed back to Washington, D.C., for scheduled congressional voting.


Hunter helped secure funding for the primary border fence, a 10-foot-high wall of welded steel that was built along 14 miles between San Diego and Tijuana in 1993. Since then, double- and triple-fencing has gone up near San Diego to reinforce some parts of the primary fence.
"We reduced apprehensions in what was the No. 1 smugglers' corridor in America," Hunter said. "We put gangs out of business."

Opponents of a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border have said that it would not improve security but would only reroute immigrants to less secure sections of the border. Richardson has called for hiring twice as many border patrol agents to protect the entire border and arming them with better surveillance technology, establishing a reasonable path to legalization for immigrants who are already in the country, cracking down on illegal workers and the employers who hire them, increasing the number of legal immigrants allowed in the country, and partnering with Mexico and other Latin American countries.

Although the actual number of illegal immigrants crossing the border is unclear, apprehension rates have long been used as a performance measure by the border patrol, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service in 2006. Apprehensions dropped 94 percent between 1993 and 2004, from 321,560 to 19,035, the report said.

Hunter said the border patrol was able to reduce the number of patrolmen in the San Diego area by more than 50 percent. Along with the drop in apprehensions, the fence also helped stem attacks on border patrol agents, who were shot at and had rocks and Molotov cocktails thrown at them, Hunter said. It has also reduced violent crimes and murders related to gang activity, he said.

"There are 250,000 illegal aliens, criminals, in federal, state penitentiaries," Hunter said. "They didn't come for jobs. They came to hurt Americans."

Hunter also criticized Columbia University for letting Iran's president address students there yesterday afternoon, and he said in a press release that he would move to cut off federal funding for the school. Hunter said he sent a letter to university president Lee Bollinger asking him not to host Ahmadinejad, whom he accused of supplying terrorists in Iraq with roadside bombs.

"I think the idea of the university lending its prestige to his visit is a real slap in the face to our men and women in uniform," Hunter said.

He also criticized the school for getting rid of its Reserve Officers' Training Corps program, which was disbanded there during the Vietnam War.

"They've said no to the armed forces of the United States, but they said yes to the dictator that has killed some of them," he said. "That's a very uneven position, at best, and hypocritical, at worst."

Hunter also said that more Democrats should have condemned the controversial MoveOn.org ad attacking the integrity of Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq. Their refusal to do so is a sign that the "hard left" is starting to dominate the party, he said.

He praised his fellow candidate, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, for his counterattack on MoveOn.org. But Hunter pointed out that he was one of the first Republicans to condemn the ad during Petraeus's testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, of which Hunter is the senior Republican.

Hunter said he expected to be back in the state campaigning within the next several weeks.

http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs ... 043/NEWS01

Opponents of a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border have said that it would not improve security but would only reroute immigrants to less secure sections of the border.

Hunter said the border patrol was able to reduce the number of patrolmen in the San Diego area by more than 50 percent.

Okay, let's assume are opponents are correct in stating that the fence will reroute ILLEGAL (they left that word out of the article) immigrants to less secure sections of the border. So basically they are saying the fence will act as a funnel to direct illegal aliens to specific locations along the border. Personally I think that is a very good thing. Furthermore, we can then send the agents freed up by the physical fence to those less secure areas. This isn't brain science and the argument against a fence is extremely weak to non-existent.

Build Duncan Hunter's double-layered border fence now!