Giuliani Still Soft on Illegal Immigration

Glenn Beck recently interviewed Rudy Giuliani-and immigration was an important part of that interview. [1]

GIULIANI: Glenn, it's not a crime. I know that's very hard for people to understand, but it's not a federal crime.

GLENN: It's a misdemeanor but if you've been nailed, it is a crime. If you've been nailed, ship back and come back, it is a crime.

GIULIANI: Glenn, being an illegal immigrant, the 400,000 were not prosecuted for crimes by the federal government, nor could they be. I was U.S. attorney in the southern district of New York. So believe me, I know this. In fact, when you throw an immigrant out of the country, it's not a criminal proceeding. It's a civil proceeding.

GLENN: Is it --

GIULIANI: One of the things that congress wanted to do a year ago is to make it a crime, which indicates that it isn't.

GLENN: Should it be?

GIULIANI: Should it be? No, it shouldn't be because the government wouldn't be able to prosecute it. We couldn't prosecute 12 million people. We have only 2 million people in jail right now for all the crimes that are committed in the country, 2.5 million. If you were to make it a crime, you would have to take the resources of the criminal justice system and increase it by about 6. In other words, you'd have to take all the 800,000 police, and who knows how many police we would have to have.

Basically Giuliani wants to have a huge amnesty, tighten the border somewhat and have some policies that would amount to a huge expansion of Guest Worker Visas. I suspect this would mean both a dramatic reduction in the value of citizenship and the expansion of the overall numbers of people in the US that don't have citizenship rights. The only way to maintain order in such a society would be using very authoritarian tactics--which I suspect Giuliani is more than willing to use.

Instead, we should expropriate the property of those who profited from illegal immigration and use the proceeds to set things right for the US citizens that have been harmed by illegal immigration and the illegal immigrants themselves. Illegal immigrants have violated US laws--but that doesn't mean their employers and landlords have no obligations towards them. The financial interests that foisted NAFTA on the American and Mexican public also have some serious responsibilities here.

Giuliani talks tough, but he just doesn't understand the responsibility of the President to protect the value of American citizenship.