09/28/2023
See also: VDARE Video Supercut: Everything That Was Said About Immigration In The GOP Debate
In the interest of saving everyone’s time, we provide a supercut and transcript of what was said about immigration in the second GOP candidates debate, held in California’s Reagan Library on Wednesday night, September 27. It’s only 15 minutes of the one and three-quarter-hour debate.
Perhaps significant of the new globalist Fox News, two of the three moderators were immigrants: Stuart Varney from England (I knew him slightly when we were both financial journalists in lower Manhattan in the early 1980s), and Univision’s heavily accented Ilia Calderon, described as an “Afro-Latina,” from Colombia.
My take after arguably sparking America’s second Thirty Years’s War For Immigration Reform in 1992 (yes, we’re a bit late):
As late as 2016, ¡Jeb! was still calling illegal immigration “an act of love” and clearly planning a massive Amnesty. Now all GOP hopefuls say they favor border control. They’re probably lying, of course, but it’s undeniably different from 2004, when Dubya, having proposed a super-massive Amnesty/ Immigration Surge, was able to pretend to attack John Kerry from the right because no one grasped what he had done, as Steve Sailer documented in this hilarious column.
Much less an immigration moratorium. This is somewhat disappointing because Ron DeSantis has in the past implied skepticism about legal immigration. But, again, he failed to use the issue to outflank the field, and Trump.
Wall Street Journal Editorial Page–type mindless immigration enthusiasm is not dead, it’s just hiding.
Pence betrayed Tom Tancredo during the Bush Amnesty Wars, and he too has obviously just been hiding during the Trump years (although he has learned to talk a good line on the Border).
The enterprising if slippery Vivek Ramaswamy brought the issue up, and Senator Tim Scott grudgingly conceded the 14th Amendment does not actually confer it. Trump and DeSantis have both endorsed the idea.
Lethal force is obviously the only way to end the Camp of the Saints Nightmare into which the entire West is slipping. The Israelis do it. Why not us?
Here’s the transcript of the video above, with links:
Tim Scott: I’ll say this, Joe Biden should not be on the picket line. He should be on the southern border working to close our southern border because it is unsafe, wide open, and insecure, leading to the deaths of 70,000 Americans in the last 12 months because of Fentanyl. It is devastating. Every county in America is now a border county because Fentanyl has devastated Americans in every single state. I will also say 6 million illegal crossings since Joe Biden has taken office and he eliminated Title 42. The one thing he should do is finish the wall, reinstate Title 42, and get the job done.
Ilia Calderón : Governor Christie, as governor of a non-border state in 2010, you supported a path to citizenship. But when you ran for president in 2016, you flipped, saying immigrants should be tracked like FedEx packages. Where do you stand now on a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants?
Chris Christie: The problem is that since no one has done anything since we first had this discussion 13 years ago, we are not in a position to be able to do any of that anymore. What we have to do now is first treat this like the law enforcement problem it is. Our laws are being broken every day at the southern border.
And Joe Biden and his crew are doing nothing about enforcing that law. They are letting it go. And by the way, they announced during the presidential race that they were going to let it go. And we need to have a president who acts like I did as governor — enforce the law first and foremost. And that means what I’ll do on day one is sign an executive order to send the National Guard to partner with Customs and Border Patrol to make sure that we stop the flow of fentanyl over the border, but also to make sure that we send a much different message. We want you here in this country to fill the six million vacant jobs we have, but only if you come here to follow the law and only if you come here legally.
If you come here illegally, we will apprehend you and we will send you back across the border from which you came. And the fact is that until we set a law and order agenda in this country, not only now, but in the future, we won’t be able to continue this. And I’ll look, I’ll tell you this. Donald Trump failed on this as well. He said he was going to build a wall across the whole border. He built 52 miles of wall and said Mexico would pay for it. Guess what? I think if Mexico knew that he was only going to build 52 miles, they might have paid for the 52 miles.
Dana Perino: In the last decade, the U.S. has spent nearly $55 billion to address the root causes of migration. But crime, poverty and corruption, they persist, and the number of migrants is only growing. Are we wasting our money?
Nikki Haley: Well, what happens is when Joe Biden waved the green flag, it told everybody to come. And now we’ve seen six million people cross the border. We’ve had more fentanyl that have killed Americans in the Iraq, Vietnam or Afghanistan wars combined. We need to make sure that we are a country of laws. The second we stop being a country of laws, we give up everything this country was founded on. So we have to secure the border. The way we do that is, first of all, defund sanctuary cities. You see what’s happening in Philadelphia right now. It’s got to stop. We need to make sure we put 25,000 more border patrol and ICE agents on the ground and let them do their job. I spent 400 miles down that border and I’m telling you, border patrol agents aren’t allowed to do their job. Let’s go back to Remain in Mexico policy. Instead of catch and release, let’s go to catch and deport.
Dana Perino: What about the aid that federal taxpayers are paying to deal with the root causes? It’s not working? Or is it?
Nikki Haley: The only aid that we should be spending right now is to secure the border, the southern border, the northern border, period. You would cut off aid to the region? We need to keep Americans safe. And right now, Americans are not safe. Only when we fix the immigration system, only when we get the border secure, should we ever look at putting any more money into this. Our money should be about keeping Americans safe. We’re not doing that. Joe Biden’s not doing that.
Vivek Ramaswamy: So the first thing I want to say is I agree with everything. The Republicans on this stage are on the right side of this issue. Militarize the southern border. Stop funding sanctuary cities and end foreign aid to Mexico and Central America to end the incentives to come across. But I do go a step further. You’re right about that, Ilia. I favor ending birthright citizenship for the kids of illegal immigrants in this country
Now, the left will howl about the Constitution and the 14th Amendment. The difference between me and them is I’ve actually read the 14th Amendment. What it says is that all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the laws and jurisdiction thereof are citizens. So nobody believes that the kid of a Mexican diplomat in this country enjoys birthright citizenship. Not a judge or legal scholar in this country will disagree with me on that.
Well, if the kid of a Mexican diplomat doesn’t enjoy birthright citizenship, then neither does the kid of an illegal migrant who broke the law to come here. And as the father of two sons, it is hard for me to look them in the eye and say, “You have to follow the law when our own government fails to follow its own laws.” That’s how we really go the distance and solve this problem and restore the rule of law in the United States of America, because that is part of what it even means to be an American.
Tim Scott: Yeah, there’s no doubt the fact that when you think of the Constitution and the 14th Amendment, it was certainly written as it relates to slavery, not as it relates to illegal immigration. It’s been applied to illegal immigration. So the challenge that we face is, in fact, one that has to do with whether or not the people that come here are under the jurisdiction of our laws. And frankly, if you come here illegally, you are not.
Surviving a Supreme Court argument is something I can’t tell you. But from a perspective of the Constitution, I think it’s simple, that clearly it was designed for slavery and not for illegal immigration.
Vice President Pence, in 2017, the Trump-Pence administration canceled DACA, which put the legal status of 600,000 DREAMers in the hands of the courts.
DREAMers work, and they pay taxes. As president, if the Supreme Court ends DACA, would you work with Congress to reach a permanent solution for DREAMers?
Mike Pence: Let me speak to this issue. Number one: I negotiated the Remain in Mexico policy with the Mexican government.
We used economic power to bring the Mexican government to the table.
We built hundreds of miles of border wall. And despite what’s said here today, we reduced illegal immigration and asylum abuse by 90 percent. And as president of the United States, I can do it again. And the truth is, we need to fix a broken immigration system, and I’ll do that as well. But first and foremost, a nation without borders is not a nation. We have to secure the southern border of the United States of America. I know how to do it, and we will do it again. Let me say one other thing about China.
Will you negotiate with Congress to give a solution to the problem that DREAMers have right now? They are on a limbo. Let me tell you, I served in Congress for 12 years, although it seemed longer.
Ilia Calderón : According to Customs and Border Protection, about 90 percent of fentanyl is seized at official border crossings, and 57 percent of the smugglers are U.S. citizens.( … ) How would you stop fentanyl brought into the country, mostly by U.S. citizens, through ports of entry?
Vivek Ramaswamy: There are two sides to this, and we have to be very honest about it. One is we do have to seal that southern border. Building the wall is not enough. They’re building cartel-financed tunnels underneath that wall. Semi-trucks can drive through them. We have to use our own military to seal the Swiss cheese of a southern border. But we also have to be honest. There’s a demand-side problem in this country, too, a mental health epidemic. I met [a] family in Iowa, two parents, Kathy and Derek. They lost their son Sebastian, 17 years old. He bought Percocet on Snapchat, and then he died. Why did he die? Because it was laced with fentanyl. That is closer to bioterrorism, not a drug overdose. That is poisoning.
So it is our job to make sure that never happens. But it’s also our job to make sure that 17-year-olds don’t turn to Percocet via Snapchat. We have to bring back mental health care in this country, not with pump-in-pharmaceuticals, but with faith-based approaches that restore purpose and meaning in the next generation of Americans.
Ron DeSantis: Everything he said I agree with. That is why, as commander-in-chief, I’m going to use the U.S. military to go after the Mexican drug cartels. They are killing our people. And the stories that I’ve seen … In Florida, we had an infant, 18 months, parents rented an Airbnb, and apparently the people that had rented it before were using drugs. The infant was crawling, the toddler was crawling on the carpet and ingested fentanyl residue and died. Are we just going to sit here and let this happen, this carnage happen in our country? I am not going to do that. So I guarantee you on day one, this border is going to be a day-one issue for me as president. We’re going to declare it a national emergency. Yes, we’ll build the wall. We’ll do Remain in Mexico. But those Mexican drug cartels are going to be treated like the foreign terrorist organizations that they are.
Ilia Calderón : You say you will send special operations to attack the cartels in Mexico. So this means boots on the ground, drone strikes?
Nikki Haley: It means Special Operations. That’s how we deal with our terrorists. And what you need to do is understand that Mexico is not being a good partner if we lost 75,000 Americans last year. Mexico is not being a good partner if they’re letting the cartels get away with what they’re getting away with. What we will do is we will make sure that we send in our Special Operations and we will take out the cartels, we’ll take out their operations, we’ll take out anything that’s doing it. But we’re going to go after China because China is the one sending the fentanyl in the first place.
As your president, I will make sure every American is safe and we’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen.
Tim Scott: Addressing the issue of fentanyl, I’ve written the legislation, passed it through the Banking Committee and the Senate that would freeze the assets and sanction the accounts of the Mexican cartels.
Doug Burgum: The border plans already talking about, we’ve got troops down at the border flying in here. Getting helicopter missions from North Dakota, from San Diego to the Gulf Coast, trying to stop transnational criminal organizations from inflicting the invasion and the mass casualties in our state. And on the energy policy, we’re already doing it. It’s not saying nobody else has done the big fights. North Dakota was leading the charge. We won the battle to get the Biden administration who was ignoring the law. They were the first administration since Truman that wasn’t holding the quarterly required lease sales and we won that in federal court. WOTUS. We won that in federal court.
We’re fighting the Biden administration on 20 fronts to say that nobody’s fighting the big fights. Just look at the record of what we’re doing right now. Energy, economy, national security have been talking about it since day one and now finally good we’re having the conversation about it. But we’ve got the answer in North Dakota. It’s in our interest to end this war. And that’s what I will do as president. We are not going to have a blank check. We will not have U.S. troops and we’re going to make the Europeans do what they need to do. We spent money to pay bureaucrats pensions and salaries and funding small businesses halfway around the world. Meanwhile, our own country is being invaded. We don’t even have control of our own territory. We have got to defend the American people before we even worry about all these other things. And I watch these guys in Washington, D.C. and they don’t care about the American people. They don’t care about the fentanyl deaths. They don’t care about the communities being overrun because of this border. They don’t care about the Mexican drug cartels. So as commander in chief, I will defend this country’s sovereignty.
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