Fusion
By Jorge Rivas
August 6, 2015
Republican
presidential hopefuls Rick Perry and Rick Santorum couldn’t answer a
simple question about immigration during the first GOP presidential
debate on Thursday.
Both candidates—who argue they would be the toughest on immigration and
have the most experience on the issue—completely dodged a question
about immigration policies that break families apart.
“What
would you say to a child born and raised in America who could see their
family broken apart by your [immigration] policy?” asked Fox News host
Bill Hemmer, who was
the only person in the 80-minute debate to refer to immigrants as
“illegals.”
Santorum
began by saying his father was stuck in Benito Mussolini’s Italy for
seven years before being able to come to the U.S. to join the rest of
his family, alluding
to him being able to deal with family separation.
“The
reason America is a great country, the reason is because our compassion
is in our laws and we live by those laws and treat everyone equally
under those laws. That’s
when people feel good about being Americans,” he said.
Immigration
and Customs Enforcement in 2013 deported more than 72,000 parents who
said they had U.S.-born children, according to reports sent to Congress.
Santorum and
Perry were participating in a Fox News “happy hour debate” for those
candidates who missed the bar to appear in Thursday’s primetime
showdown.
Hemmer
posed the same question to Perry, the former governor of Texas. “Gov.
Perry, try answering this question again, what do you say to the family
of illegals?”
“The
fact is the border is still porous until we have a president of the
United States that gets up every day and goes to the Oval Office with
the intent purpose of securing
that border. There is not anybody on either one of these stages that
has the experience dealing with this as I have for over 14 years with
that 1,200-mile border,” Perry said.
Still,
the immigration-related quote of the forum belonged to Louisiana Gov.
Bobby Jindal, who came out forcefully against “hyphenated Americans.”
“Immigration without assimilation is invasion,” Jindal said.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
No comments:
Post a Comment