Jacob addresses immigration in forum

[jimpasz]

http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/180914/4/

Friday, June 02, 2006
Jacob addresses immigration in forum

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ALAN CHOATE - Daily Herald
Congressional candidate John Jacob called the U.S. immigration system "anarchy" Thursday and said a system should already be in place for businesses to verify the immigration status of employees.

Jacob is competing with incumbent U.S. Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, for the Republican nomination in the Third Congressional District, which includes Utah County. Party voters will vote on the race June 27. The winner will face Democrat Christian Burridge, Libertarian Philip Hallman and Constitution Party candidate Jim Noorlander in the November general election.

Jacob made his remarks at a Provo-Orem Chamber of Commerce forum in downtown Provo. Cannon spoke at a similar forum May 22.

"The whole concept on illegal immigration is wrong," Jacob said. "The concept that businesses cannot exist without illegal immigrants is wrong."

He noted that a system for instantly checking someone's background for gun purchases has been developed, and that "if you take a credit card, for 290 million people you know in 10 seconds whether it's good or not."

"Heaven forbid that we use computers to determine if the Social Security Number that we've just received from our employees is a fake," he said.

There is also a double standard for illegal workers, Jacob said.

"If you and I used false identification ... and we got caught, we'd be put in jail," he said. "An illegal immigrant -- that's just normal. We're creating a different class of citizens ... people who are here in America, and because they want a better life, that's OK.

"If we don't follow these laws, we have anarchy. Can you think of anything closer to the illegal immigration problem than anarchy?"

Both Jacob and Cannon have discussed tighter enforcement on the U.S.-Mexico border as the first step in addressing illegal immigration concerns.

Jacob painted a dire picture of the impact of illegal immigration, saying that students who don't speak English are straining public school systems and that people without health insurance are crowding hospital emergency rooms for health care needs.

"When we have 12 million illegal immigrants to 20 million illegal immigrants, we're already in pain," he said. "We're losing schools. We have hospitals that say, 'If you come in and it's an emergency, we have to treat you.' What does that do to your insurance? It makes it go up."

In response to audience questions, Jacob also linked the education and energy issues, saying that the development of Utah's energy resources could boost the state's economy, reduce the country's reliance on foreign oil and generate revenue for public schools.

He said he supports drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and talked about the benefits of oil development in Utah, including experiments to profitably develop oil shale resources.

"We need to have the government and the energy companies set money aside to incentivize the development of our shale oil, development of our wind power, development of solar, or thermal, or even natural gas," Jacob said.

"We worry about our money going outside of the United States. This is one of the ways we could improve that. We can develop energy here, and Utah has a tremendous amount of energy."

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page D1.

[nittygritty]

Sounds like a good man, do you think he has a snowballs chance in hell in Utah?