Blunt speaks on topics related to Carthage


By John Hacker
Carthage Press
Mon Mar 17, 2008, 03:00 PM CDT


CARTHAGE, Mo. -
For about five hours, on Friday, Carthage was the center of Missouri government as Gov. Matt Blunt and dozens of staffers from the myriad of state departments and agencies visited.

Many of the officials toured offices and a variety of places throughout Carthage.

Blunt made a number of stops in Carthage, including one half-hour stop at the offices of The Carthage Press.

The governor answered a number of questions from Press General Manager Buzz Ball and Reporter John Hacker.

Because of the length of the conversation we've broken this down to two articles.

Most of the first half of the conversation dealt with Blunt's policies and proposals regarding illegal immigration. Part one will include his answers to those questions and part two, in Tuesday's paper will include his answers to questions about sexually oriented businesses, the sunshine law and other topics.

• Illegal immigration in Southwest Missouri:

"Many non-partisan groups will tell you that there are tens of thousands of illegal immigrants in the state of Missouri," Blunt said. "Most of those do not present any sort of danger to society through some sort of criminal behavior, but they are disruptive to the economy, so they are a very real problem and there are pockets of Southwest Missouri where it's a greater problem than in others.

"I think it's important to preface any comments on this issue by reminding people of how important legal immigration is. Legal immigration is good for our culture; good for our economy and we Missourians welcome legal immigrants. As we've seen there are a lot of industries in our state that depend on legal immigration. Legal immigrants are good, hardworking people that are coming here for the exact same reason our ancestors came here for 100, 200, 300 years ago. We need to continue to have those open arms to welcome all legal immigrants and help them and embrace them into our society.
"That's why I'm supportive of things like using English as the official language for some government meetings, not because I want to somehow push people out, but because I want to include everybody. English is the language of opportunity, that's the reason why kids in Singapore learn English, because it's the language of opportunity. We need to endure that every American has the potential for opportunity and they need to learn the English language.

• Illegal immigration and state lawmakers:

"Nothing is going to be done on the national level, we will do something at the state level. I've been pretty straightforward with the members of the General Assembly that there are few issues that lead to a special session, and certainly I have almost never said in the past that if you don't do something we'll have a special session. If we don't pass good legislation to curb illegal immigration in the state, we will have a special session to address the issue.

"We will deal with it this year, I think taking things like my executive orders and directives, placing them in statutes for future governors to abide by is important. Clarifying under state law that illegal immigrants can't receive a driver's license is a step that we can take. Stating for instance that we can't have sanctuary cities in the state of Missouri is a good state action that we can take. Making it illegal to transport illegal immigrants for any purpose, including work is a good measure that can be passed this year. There are a number of things we can do, the House and the Senate have discussed and I've proposed that we certainly should ban illegal immigrants from receiving any sort of state welfare benefits."

• Private businesses that employ illegal aliens:

"If you're really going to punish people, it has to be people who are knowingly and intentionally hiring illegals," Blunt said." Folks that are unknowingly hiring those illegals, we need to be developing some things that they have to do in the future to ensure it doesn't happen again. I've directed, for example, that all of the state government use e-verify, it's been very successful, we've had over 10,000 verifications.
"Now we haven't hired 10,000 people, but we've checked the eligibility of over 10,000 applicants, with great success, very few problems. It works, I'd recommend it to any employer, I certainly would recommend, and I've said it ought to be mandatory for schools and any government entity that is supported by taxpayer dollars."
• Illegal immigration and the Hispanic community:

"A legal immigrant should in no way get nervous about this, in fact I think they ought to welcome efforts to curb illegal immigration." Blunt said. "If we have a system where most of our immigrants are here illegally, then the American people will start to believe that someone who is an immigrant is here illegally. I think curbing illegal immigration benefits everybody. I know that some legal immigrants will tell you it makes them a little worried, others will tell you that they came here legally, they played by the rules, they think others should play by the rules as well."

http://www.carthagepress.com/news/x2015304804