Thread: Texas Governor - Perry: Idea of border fence 'preposterous'

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/community/16184650.htm

Posted on Thu, Dec. 07, 2006

Perry: Idea of border fence 'preposterous'
By JOHN MORITZ
STAR-TELEGRAM AUSTIN BUREAU

AUSTIN -- Gov. Rick Perry told the Texas Border Coalition on Wednesday that erecting a wall to separate the United States from Mexico is a "preposterous idea" and that proposed legislation to deny citizenship to U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants is needlessly divisive.

"Good neighbors do not foster fear and engage in divisive appeals; they seek solutions," the newly elected Republican told the coalition, which seeks to improve economic conditions in South Texas.

"Divisive appeals do nothing to solve problems, even if they do score some temporary political points."

Perry's speech during a conference at a downtown Austin hotel and his question-and-answer session with reporters afterward drew praise from the state's largest business lobby and from one of the nation's leading liberal voices.

But the East Texas lawmaker advocating legislation to prohibit illegal immigrants' children from becoming citizens, attending public schools or receiving other state services said he was disappointed.

"He says my bill is divisive, but what we have in place now is actually what's divisive," said state Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler. "We have people coming into this country illegally ... and then receiving automatic citizenship.

"I believe that's wrong, and I filed this bill so that this practice can be challenged in the courts."

Perry did not back away from his calls for greater support from Washington in securing the border, and he even called for federally built detention centers to house illegal immigrants as they face the deportation process. But he also emphasized the need for a guest-worker program for Mexican nationals who seek employment in Texas but not necessarily U.S. citizenship.

"We can have security that does not compromise our economy," Perry said. "The vast majority [of illegal immigrants] are economic migrants who are seeking hope."

Bill Hammond, a former Republican lawmaker from Dallas who heads the Texas Association of Business, said Perry was correct to point out that Texas' economy is reliant on a labor force that includes noncitizens. And he warned against any efforts by the Legislature to circumvent federal law.

"The governor is absolutely correct to call on Congress to enact comprehensive immigration reform. That's not the Legislature's job," Hammond said.

The remarks put Hammond in lock step with Deece Eckstein, a one-time aide to former Democratic Gov. Ann Richards who runs the liberal People for the American Way's Texas branch.

"We welcome Governor Perry's new, more constructive tone on immigration issues," Eckstein said. "He understood one of the central messages of the recent elections -- that immigrant bashing is not only mean-spirited and counterproductive, it is also politically unpopular, especially in Texas.

"Governor Perry realizes what these legislators apparently do not -- that the economic and social future of Texas depends on a healthy, well-educated work force that, like it or not, will continue to be increasingly Hispanic."

Perry also stressed the need for policies at the state level and in Washington that promote economic development in Mexico. In the short run, he said, a fence in strategic places along the border could help staunch the flow of illegal immigrants, but a permanent physical barrier would not work. "Building a wall across the entire border is preposterous," he said. What a wall would accomplish, he said, would be to "really help the ladder business."

Ana Yanez Correa, who advocates for immigrant rights, said Perry is taking the proper tone heading into the 140-day legislative session that begins Jan. 9. "Programs that are full of fear are not the message that Texas should be sending, especially considering that we are a border state," she said.

BORDER WEB SITE TEST OVER

A Web site showing live footage of Texas' border with Mexico is down. The governor's office said that's because the monthlong test of the site is over.

State officials are preparing a request for companies to bid on the contract for www.texasborderwatch.com, said Robert Black, Gov. Rick Perry's spokesman.

The state spent $200,000 setting up and maintaining the Web site, Black said. Cameras were donated by companies expected to bid on the project.

Since Nov. 3, more than 220,000 users registered on the site, which said it got nearly 28 million hits.

Cameras showed different, unnamed parts of the border area. Viewers could help identify possible illegal crossings.

Black said he expects the site to be operational again in 2007.

-- Patrick McGee

ARRESTS DROP

EL PASO -- The number of illegal immigrants being arrested at the U.S.-Mexico border has dropped sharply in the first two months of this fiscal year, with some Border Patrol sectors seeing a drop of up to 63 percent.

Arrests along the border in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California have dropped about 27 percent, or by nearly 43,000, since Oct. 1, compared with last year, Border Patrol officials in Washington said.

Reports of the decrease come about a month after Border Patrol officials announced a nearly 9 percent drop in arrests from 2004 to 2005.

-- The Associated Press

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT following the article

This was not comment left which I felt was very relevant to this article.

To poster 1038.117. Although it may look on the report from the comptroller that Texas actually spent less than it collected from undocumented people, take a look at the whole report. It shows that local governments LOST 928.9 million which is a total loss for the state at 504.2 million. This report also includes the federal assistance to the state of Texas which is far more than the 424.7 million surplus. So, the U.S taxpayor loses by a large margin. This is just for Texas, can you imagine what the cost is to California?? We as taxpayers are losing BILLIONS per year on illegals. Time to wake the hell up people!!

Posted by: PB
12/8/2006 11:20 AM

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/met ... 87685.html

Rick Casey
Dec. 7, 2006, 11:37PM
Will real guv please stand?


By RICK CASEY
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

TOOLS
Email Get section feed
Print Subscribe NOW
AN Austin reporter waved his hand vigorously and finally won his reward. The governor nodded to him for the next question.

Which was: "Who are you, and what have you done to Rick Perry?"

This didn't actually happen, but it might have Wednesday after Perry ridiculed the idea of a fence along the border as "preposterous," called for a guest-worker program for illegal immigrants currently in the country and lamented that the recent election campaign was "very heavy on immigration rhetoric and, I might add, very light on comprehensive solutions."

If you have a television, you might remember one of the campaign ads that fit that description. It featured Rick Perry his very own self, dressed in blue jeans and a leather jacket, walking the rugged banks of the Rio Grande with law enforcement officials.


Pouring over porous border
"There can be no homeland security without border security," he said. "If the federal government won't act to protect the Texas border, I will."

Nothing about comprehensive solutions to the immigrant program, or good relations with our neighbor Mexico, or guest-worker programs.

Just "authorizing the use of DPS state troopers, helicopters, SWAT teams, covert surveillance teams, canine units, game wardens and the Texas Civil Air Patrol to stop illegal activity on the border," as well as setting up hidden cameras with live images so citizens can patrol the border on their home computers, and $100 million in state funds for border security.

So which one is the real Rick Perry? The one who Wednesday said we "need to look at ways to be bringing people together rather than driving wedges between them"?

Or the one who ran the scary TV ads suggesting that terrorists are pouring across our porous border?

The answer is: Both. Rick Perry was just being a skilled politician.


A different message
One of the most important political skills is to tell each audience what they want to hear without actually lying.

In the TV ads he was speaking to his base of angry Republican and independent voters who think immigrants are a burden to society and a menace to security.

In his speech Wednesday he was addressing a conference of public officials from cities and towns along the border, but he was also speaking to his cadre of wealthy campaign contributors who own businesses that are heavily dependent on immigrant labor.

His unspoken message: "I've got your back."

Perry's largest campaign contributor this year, at $380,000, was Houston's Bob Perry, who has grown wealthy in home building, an industry that relies on immigrant labor.

Bo Pilgrim, whose chicken-processing empire is also dependent on immigrant labor, gave Perry $100,000 this year.

The two were among eight business leaders who signed an article last August in the Dallas Morning News arguing that "Americans must face up to the reality of the foreign workers we need to keep the economy growing and bring them under the rule of law, for their sake and ours."

Without donors like these, Gov. Perry would not have been able to buy all that TV time dramatizing his steely resolve to guard the border.

One of the things Perry did with his speech Wednesday was to let legislators know he has no use for some anti-immigrant bills that have been introduced, such as ones that would deny public schooling to children of illegal immigrants and declare that babies born in the United States of illegal immigrants are not citizens, no matter what the Constitution says.

"Any of those types of legislation that create divisions are bad," said the governor.

Ones that create divisions between governors and their heaviest contributors are especially bad.

The governor will argue correctly that securing the border and designing a program that welcomes a large number of legal immigrant workers are not inconsistent.

He just knows there's a time to throw red meat, and a time to talk poultry.

You can write to Rick Casey at P.O. Box 4260, Houston, TX 77210, or e-mail him at rick.casey@chron.com.

I found to good words from the initial article posted here that greatly magnify Rick Perry as governor: needless and preposterous.