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By JENNIFER TALHELM
The Associated Press
Friday, June 23, 2006; 10:05 PM
WASHINGTON -- A Republican gubernatorial candidate's call for creation of a forced labor camp for illegal immigrants drew rebukes Friday from two GOP lawmakers, who labeled it a low point in the immigration debate.
Don Goldwater, nephew of the late Sen. Barry Goldwater, caused an international stir this week when EFE, a national news agency of Spain, quoted him as saying he wanted to hold undocumented immigrants in camps to use them "as labor in the construction of a wall and to clean the areas of the Arizona desert that they're polluting."
The article described Goldwater's plan as a "concentration camp" for migrants.
Goldwater, a candidate for governor in Arizona, said in a statement Friday that his comments were taken out of context. He said he was calling for a work program for convicted nonviolent felons, similar to "tried and tested, effective and accepted practices" used by state and local jails.
But two Republicans, Arizona Sen. John McCain and Rep. Jim Kolbe, called Goldwater's comments "deeply offensive" and asked state Republicans to reject his candidacy in the Sept. 12 primary.
"That Mr. Goldwater is either unaware of or indifferent to the loaded symbolism, injustice and un-Americanism of his 'plan' to address the many serious issues caused by illegal immigration reveals his flaws as a candidate and a stunning lack of respect for the basic values of a generous and decent society," McCain said in a statement.
Kolbe said that if the comments are true, Goldwater "has demonstrated his complete unworthiness for public office, and I am confident he will be soundly rejected by Republicans from the party of Barry Goldwater, who consistently demonstrated his compassion and respect for all people. This is a sad day in the national debate on immigration policy."
McCain and Kolbe favor a guest-worker program for illegal immigrants.
Goldwater made a similar comment at an April anti-immigration rally.
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Personally I don't see a big problem with it. They are over here illegally looking for work. Put them to work, pay them their $8 to $10 bucks an hour and have them do something constructive. That way you can also keep an eye on them and know where they are. It sure is better than just throwing them into jail and letting them rot there.
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“So I became a newspaperman. I hated to do it but I couldn’t find honest employment.” —Mark Twain
Personally I don't see a big problem with it. They are over here illegally looking for work. Put them to work, pay them their $8 to $10 bucks an hour and have them do something constructive. That way you can also keep an eye on them and know where they are. It sure is better than just throwing them into jail and letting them rot there.
Personally I don't see a big problem with it. They are over here illegally looking for work. Put them to work, pay them their $8 to $10 bucks an hour and have them do something constructive. That way you can also keep an eye on them and know where they are. It sure is better than just throwing them into jail and letting them rot there.
SO you are saying the work that I.I's do is not contructive?
How much does it cost to confine a criminal in the US? Varying medical needs & care make it an imprecise number, but I'm guessing $35,000 - $50,000 per year. Having been in 30+ countries on this planet, I have seen some poor countries. The downside is that there isn't as much available, but the upside is that what's there is far less expensive.
I think we should contract with several of these countries to build prisons intended to house our illegal alien criminals. They would design the prisons, we would have to approve the designs, then we would pay for the prisons to be built, and then give the host government oh, say, $5,000 or $10,000 per criminal per year. They would be required to provide adequate food & water and basic medical care, and that's about it. And they would have to absolutely guarantee that the criminal would remain locked up for the entire sentence, otherwise the spigot of US dollars would get shut off.
Since a place like Bangladesh is not likely to spend the extra money on air conditioning and cable TV, their overhead is lower in an already low economy, so they could make quite a bit of money as well as provide a few jobs for their people by doing this. And once the word gets out that prison for illegals means prison in Bangladesh (or Botswana, or Uzbekistan), I'm pretty sure we'd see a downturn in the sort of crime that would land people in such prisons. (See, if we tried this with American citizens, I'm sure liberal lawyers and judges would find a constitutional right to be imprisoned in America, but they'd have a harder time doing it with illegal aliens.)
But I really like the idea of using illegal aleins to build the Great Wall of Southern US. It's very poetic.
LC and Ddog, did you guys read the whole article? Besides the gratuitous label of "concentration camps", what's wrong with the proposal?
You either give them blanket visas and monitor them, allow them to become naturalized citizens, or deport them. You do NOT force them into labor because they happen to be here.
Convicted, non-violent felons...sure, work the hell out of those guys...but not illegal aliens. It's an ugly thought process.
I don't think his comments are clear as to whether he's talking about non-violent felons in general, or illegal aliens. The article is ambiguous. Are they alien felons? Get them the hell out of our country and deport them immediately if so. If they are just random aliens, then send them back. If they are working aliens, then give them the option of applying for work visa status or naturalizing, and if they decline then send them back. There are plenty of naturalized citizens and american born people who will work cheap labor...not as cheap as aliens but that isn't their fault...that is the fault of business owners who work below the table with them and those business owners should be dealt with HARSHLY.
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I'm the anti-TNT. I don't do drama.
. (See, if we tried this with American citizens, I'm sure liberal lawyers and judges would find a constitutional right to be imprisoned in America, but they'd have a harder time doing it with illegal aliens.)
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WTF is the point of this comment Blue? You actually seemed like a pretty reasonable guy until this. I am pretty sure any judge or lawyer would have a problem with US citizens being sent to a foreign country for a domestic crime.
Many of you conservatives are so bent on using the word liberal as a pejorative that you throw it into the most ridiculous scenarios.
Call it an Ann Coulter moment. In all seriousness, I'm of the opinion that the constitution is like any other contract, the words mean what they meant when they were written. So by default I am a strict constructionist, or a Constitutional literalist, or whatever. Therefore it rankles me when people say the constitution is a living document. That usually means they don't like what was written, and they reserve the right to arbitrarily redefine the Constitution to mean something other than what it used to mean, without the encumberance of having to go through the Consititutional Amendment process. And my honest opinion is that liberal judges tend to engage in that sort of thing far more often than conservative judges. So if you'll forgive the tone of that sentence, I will go back to trying to be reasonable.
Regarding the substance of my idea, please note that I am not advocating sending US citizens anywhere. The suggestion of contract prisons is exclusively for illegal aliens.
Ddog, I had the same impression of that article, that it was a bit ambiguous. But I disagree with you on punishments. People who come here and stay here illegally are breaking our laws, represent a potential security threat, represent a significant expenditure, and screw the immigrants who are trying to do it legally. There's a lot more to say about that, but I just want to make the point that requiring convicts to work isn't unusual. And having illegal alien convicts help to build the southern wall strikes me as nothing more than a creative sentence, kind of like having a kid caught doing grafitti sentenced to clean cop cars and streetsigns.
And yes, we very much need to punish the businesses that hire illegals.
~snip~So by default I am a strict constructionist, or a Constitutional literalist, or whatever. Therefore it rankles me when people say the constitution is a living document. ~snip~
The constitution is a living document. It can be amended, and its interpretation is given to the judiciary to determine as the writers are long deceased. The J took a lot of heat to take that responsibility on, but I think that is a good decision. I'd rather have it there than anywhere else. Changing the Constitution is a very difficult process, as it should be, but it is a living document. Jefferson wanted to protect rights of all, including slaves, yet it didn't make it in. The 14th and 15th got it done.
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Ddog, I had the same impression of that article, that it was a bit ambiguous. But I disagree with you on punishments. People who come here and stay here illegally are breaking our laws, represent a potential security threat, represent a significant expenditure, and screw the immigrants who are trying to do it legally.
And my point here is that people coming here illegally ARE breaking our laws but that we should not be responsible for housing them for that crime (unless their activity here is of a nation-threat such as terrorism). We should send them back to where they came from. There is no good reason for us to keep them here. I would rather us have an open policy with our closest neighbor providing illegals, Mexico, that they should be brought back to their home country. Same goes for illegals commiting crimes...they should be tried for the crime in thier country and US citizens abroad should be tried for their crimes and incarcerated in their home country. It is idealistic, yes, but international agreements, especially between the US and Mexico (where there is a lot of both citizens in the other's country) could be made to ensure that justice is served. I am an idealist at heart.
I can not with good conscience however, agree with the US incarcerating illegal aliens simply being illegal aliens. Those people should be sent back to their home country and be dealt with there. Each of our countries have enough problems to deal with, and our money is better spent to incarcerate people who have commited real crimes, not ones who jumped a border trying to get better crappy pay in the US. It is a "crime" but it shouldn't be our problem alone. Mexico should bear the burden of its economy forcing its residents to illegally emmigrate to the U.S.
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I'm the anti-TNT. I don't do drama.
The Constitution is not a living document in the sense that most people mean when they use the term. I absolutely agree with you, there IS a mechanism for amending it, and that mechanism was purposefully very difficult. But that's the only Constitutionally approved method for changing it! What people usually mean by living document is the ability to redefine terms to suit the moment without going through the pesky amendment process.
Case in point: the 5th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States says "...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." The words "public use" used to mean something specific up until this last couple of years. But thanks to judges who believe in the living document approach to Constitutional interpretation, suddenly "public use" now has a much broader meaning. And so whereas property used to be taken for building schools and railroads and other such things, it can now be taken from you and given to me, as long as I'm richer than you and will eventually pay more taxes on that property.
Regarding sending illegals back, I'll be with you on that once the wall is up. Until then, we face a perpetual tailchase because most of those people just keep coming and coming and coming no matter how many times they get sent back they keep coming and coming and coming...
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