Tancredo's slam of Miami irritates Florida Gov. Bush

By M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Rocky Mountain News
November 29, 2006

Rep. Tom Tancredo drew fire from Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and others Tuesday after saying the ethnically diverse city of Miami resembled "a Third World country."

Tancredo, R-Littleton, touched off a controversy when he said during a weekend summit of conservative activists at a Palm Beach resort that unfettered immigration, both legal and illegal, was behind problems like high crime rates in Miami.

"You just pick it up and take it and move it someplace," Tancredo said of Miami, according to the Web site WorldNetDaily. "You would never know you're in the United States of America. You would certainly say you're in a Third World country."

The comments, later reported in the Miami Herald, drew scoldings from Florida lawmakers, including fellow Republicans.

On Tuesday night, Gov. Jeb Bush sent a pointed letter to Tancredo, calling his comments "disappointing" and "naïve."

Bush cited contributions by people of all ethnicities, and he pointed to shrinking crime rates and improvements in test scores posted by minority students.

"The bottom line is Miami is a wonderful city filled with diversity and heritage that we choose to celebrate, not insult," Bush wrote.

Tancredo spokesman Carlos Espinosa said the congressman stood behind his comments, saying they echoed what he has said for years about isolated immigrant communities that resist assimilation and cling to their native languages and customs.

Espinosa said that contributes to poverty and crime, and he cited a recent documentary that claimed Miami was more dangerous than Baghdad, Iraq.

"It's as bad as any ghetto in any Third World country," Espinosa said.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican who represents Miami, disputed Tancredo's characterizations and invited him to come down to see her district for himself.

"Tom is a good friend of mine and I hope that he accepts my invitation to see my hometown, a first-class city," Ros-Lehtinen said Tuesday.

Espinosa joked that "unless it includes a five-star resort on the beach, he's not going to consider it."

Espinosa cited a 1993 Time magazine story that called Miami the "Capital of Latin America" and said some areas of the city "resemble the Third World, with the homeless and immigrants living under highways or in matchstick houses along canals."

Crime rates have gone down since then, but Espinosa said that through early November there had been more murders in Miami-Dade County (200) than in all of Colorado in 2005 (173).

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