LEGAL IMMIGRATION FINALLY SURFACED IN THE FOURTH GOP DEBATE—at 6:22 when Governor Ron DeSantis attacked it (admittedly in the context of importing antisemitism, but whatever) and, perhaps more important, at 8:20 when Vivek Ramaswamy said:
…the Great Replacement Theory is not some grand rightwing conspiracy theory, but a basic statement of the Democratic Party’s platform.
Of course this is true, but who else has the courage to say it?
One hundred years ago, Lord Birkenhead, the then Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain and a piratical upwardly mobile product of the same socially marginal English school I attended some 75 years later, caused a great scandal by remarking in a Rectorial Address to the University of Glasgow that the world continued to offer glittering prizes to those with ”stout hearts and sharp swords.”
By sheer imagination and courage, Vivek Ramaswamy is illustrating this principle. As of course does former Trump aide Stephen Miller [Tweet him], whom I continue to regard as America’s first Jewish president, cf. Britain’s Benjamin Disraeli.
Overall, my take as a thirty-year veteran of the Immigration Wars: As I said after the second GOP debate, the GOP has come a long way on immigration.
Here is the video:
Below is the transcript, with links added.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
(...)
Moderator: Governor DeSantis, I’d like to start with you. You have pledged to send the military to the southern border on day one of your administration with orders to shoot, quote, ”stone cold dead” anyone illegally entering with a backpack that you believe contains fentanyl.(...) Critics have called this a shoot first, ask questions later policy that would amount to extrajudicial killing. You are a former military lawyer. Why do you think this idea of yours would be legal?
DeSantis: The drug cartels are invading our country, and they are killing our citizens by the tens of thousands every year. We had a situation in Florida. There was an 18-month-old baby that was crawling on the floor of an Airbnb rental. There was fentanyl residue on the carpet, and the baby died. Is this acceptable in this country?
I know the elites in DC. They don’t care. They don’t care that fentanyl is ravaging your community. They don’t care that illegal aliens are ravaging our community and overwhelming our community. The Commander In Chief not only has a right, you have a responsibility to fight back against these people.
Moderator: And does that mean shooting first?
DeSantis: It means you’re going to categorize them as Foreign Terrorist Organizations,(...) and we will identify just like we would anywhere. When I was in Iraq,(...) the Al Qaeda wasn’t wearing a uniform. You’d see anyone walking down the street. They all had man dresses on. You didn’t know if someone had a bomb, an IED attached or not. And so you had to make a judgment based on intelligence, based on positive identification. But we’re going to be able to get the intelligence on these cartel people. And here’s the thing. If we had a wall across the southern border, which I support, this would not have happened. We need to build a wall across the southern border. I’ll get it done, and I’ll make four [sic]—Mexico is supposed to pay for it. Remember? Here’s how you do that. I am going to have fees on remittances from foreign workers when they send the money back to foreign countries. We’re going to tax it, and we’re going to build a wall with that. So yes, you should have had that. But we don’t have it. I’m going to build it. But we have to lean in on this problem. I am not going to sit there and allow mothers to lose more kids because of fentanyl overdose. I am not going to sit there and let sex trafficking go unabated or human trafficking go unabated. There’s going to be a new sheriff in town, and these drug cartels better buckle up. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
(...)
Moderator: Ambassador Haley,(...) you have pledged to catch and deport all migrants who are here in this country illegally. But then you said in Londonderry, New Hampshire, last month that you will not deport those who are working and paying taxes rather than feeding off the system. Which is it?
Haley: So first of all, what I said is all of the seven or eight million illegals that have come under Biden’s watch absolutely have to go back. We have to stop the incentive of what’s bringing them over here in the first place. Biden just gave Temporary Protected Status to 500,000 Venezuelans. That’s a half a million social security cards. That’s a half a million driver’s licenses. And I know from my time at the United Nations, the first thing they do is pick up the phone and said [sic], we came over, come on over. And that’s what sends more. You have to go and deport these people so they know it can’t happen again. For those that have been here longer than that, we’ve got to start seeing who is it, how long have they been here? Have they been vetted? Have they paid taxes? Have they been working and figure out who else is out there? But what I know is my parents came here legally. They put in the time, they put in the price. They are offended by those that are coming illegally. We can’t let them skip the line. But when you talk about fentanyl like you did before, let’s look at something else. Yes, I think we should send Special Operations over and take out the cartels. I think we should do a Remain in Mexico policy so they never step foot in US soil in the first place. But look at where fentanyl came from. Let’s go to the heart of the matter. It came from China.
Moderator: Mr. Ramaswamy (...) over the past year, fentanyl has killed more than 75,000 Americans, 1,000 of them right here in Alabama. You have vowed to use the military to, ”annihilate drug labs inside Mexico,” something the President of Mexico said would be a hostile act. But fentanyl can easily be made anywhere, and labs that are shut down can easily and quickly be replaced. Are your tough enforcement policies offering false hope to a country wracked by addiction?
Ramaswamy: To the contrary, I don’t think it’s going to have to come to that if we deal with the actual demand side problem that we also have in this country. I mean, the easy part is talking about how we’re going to use our military to secure the border. I will, and I believe that everybody else wants to do the same thing. But the harder part is dealing with the crisis of purpose and meaning, the mental health epidemic raging across this country like wildfire. But I want to get back to this issue of the root cause, because a lot of these are coming from labs in Wuhan, China, of all places, drug materials that are going to the Mexican drug cartels, that they’re pumping across that southern border like a modern Opium War.
Moderator: Ambassador Haley(...) former President Trump recently promised, if he’s reelected, to bring back and expand his program restricting immigration from Muslim countries. Ambassador Haley, do you support President Trump’s plan for ideological screening?(...)
Haley: Well, I don’t think that you have a straight up Muslim ban as much as you look at the countries that have terrorist activity that want to hurt Americans. You do. You can ban those people from those countries. That’s the way we should look at it, is which countries are a threat to us. You look at what came across the southern border. What worries me the most are those that came from Iran, from Yemen, from Lebanon, those areas where they say, ”Death to America.”
That’s where you want to be careful. It’s not about a religion. It’s about a fact that certain countries are dangerous and are threats to us. The President has one job, and that’s to keep Americans safe, and that’s what we’ve got to do is make sure that we have good national security in that process, and that’s the way you should look at it, is where the terrorist threats are, how we’re going to deal with it, and what we’re doing about it. And the biggest threat we have right now is Communist China, but you have to also look at what Iran and Russia are doing as well, and we need to be paying attention to that. That’s why we have to focus on things like cyber, on space, on artificial intelligence, and not just the regular things that we’ve always focused on.
DeSantis: It’s not just terrorism, though. That’s important. But look what’s happened in Europe. You have more anti-Semitism in Germany than at any time since Adolf Hitler. Why? Because they imported mass numbers of people who reject their culture. Europe is committing suicide with the mass migration, and it’s illegal and legal. Nikki Haley said the other day there should be no limits on legal immigration, and that corporate CEOs should set the policy on that.
Haley: That’s not true.
DeSantis: There needs to be limits on immigration, and we should not be importing people from cultures that are hostile. So, for example, I said with the Gaza, you had some of The Squad wanted to import 300,000 people from the Gaza Strip. I said, ”No, we’re not taking anyone from Gaza because of the anti-Semitism and because they reject American culture. So we’ve got to get smart about this. We cannot let the United States be like Europe.”
Ramaswamy: What about all of the illegals who are already here? Here’s the answer. There’s 287G in the law. That is a provision that already allows ICE agents to deputize or allow local law enforcement to enforce those ICE warrants. And it shocks me that nobody in the Republican Party is talking about it because there are 1 million, then, officials, law enforcement officials in this country, and against that backdrop, we absolutely have the ability to deport anybody who’s in this country illegally.
Moderator: Thank you, Mr. Ramaswamy.
Ramaswamy: We need to be talking about more in this country.
Ramaswamy: Thank you. Governor Christie….
Haley: (Interjection) Actually did that [I.E. 287G immigration enforcement] as governor of South Carolina.
DeSantis: He said he was going to build a wall and have Mexico pay for it. We don’t have the wall. He did say in 2016 he’d have the largest deportation program in history. He deported less than Barack Obama did when Barack Obama was president. So some of these policies he ran on in 16, I was cheering him on, then, but he didn’t deliver it.
Ramaswamy: Why am I the only person on the stage, at least, who can say that January 6th now does look like it was an inside job, that the government lied to us for 20 years about Saudi Arabia’s involvement in 911, that the Great Replacement Theory is not some grand rightwing conspiracy theory, but a basic statement of the Democratic Party’s platform.
Haley: America right now is acting like it’s September 10th. We better remember what September 12th felt like because it only takes one, and whether you’re looking at open borders that are allowing people to come in, Iran knows the easiest way to get to America is through the southern border, and we’re not doing anything to stop it. We’ve got to get the foreign infiltration out of our country, whether it’s in our schools, whether it’s on our social media, whether we need to stop all foreign lobbying that’s happening to members of Congress, and we need to start securing America again.
Christie: If you’re too timid to take on Trump, believe me, others will see that timidity. Xi, Putin, and the Ayatollah, the border crossers on the southern border, and the criminals in our streets. They’ll sense that timidity, and they’ll take advantage of that failure of leadership.
Haley: Our country is in chaos. We see it on the southern border.
(...)
I envision an America where we’re protected from illegal immigration and Chinese infiltration.
