Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said there was no “rational reason” for sanctuary cities while saying border security doesn’t necessarily mean “you have to build fences and walls” and advocating for allowing illegal immigrants in the US to become guest workers if they register, pay back taxes, and pay taxes going forward on Friday’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto” on the Fox News Channel.
Carson began by saying, “a number of us are extremely concerned about this whole sanctuary city mess, but even more importantly, the illegal immigration problem that we have. I’ve spoken very strongly about that, and we need to go ahead and solve the problem. We have the ability to do it. We don’t have the will to do it.”
He continued, “What I would do is I would secure the borders, north, south, east, and west. That does not necessarily mean you have to build fences and walls. We can take advantage of electronic surveillance, drones, and a variety of technological features. And then, part two is we have to turn off the spigot that dispenses the goodies. If there’s no goodies, there’s no reason for people to try to breach our security wall, that takes care of the people coming in, but then you have the 11 plus million who are here already. What I would do is allow them to become guest workers. If they register, and they get involved in a back tax program and taxes going forward. That does not make them citizens. This does not give them the right to vote. If they want to do that, they can get in the back of the line and go through the process just like everybody else.”
When asked if he would outlaw sanctuary cities, Carson answered, “I certainly don’t think that there’s any rational reason for sanctuary cities. I’m glad there’s focus on them now, because I would like the people who advocate for them to come out and tell us exactly why we need them, and I can tell them 100 reasons why we don’t.”
Carson then addressed the racism charges against advocacy against sanctuary cities and the rhetoric of Donald Trump, saying, “It’s a very easy political football, the racism trick. Basically, anything that involves people of two different races, now is because of racism, and it’s just the way to drive wedges, like we’re driving wedges in between gender, we’re driving wedges from income, we’re driving religious wedges, driving intergenerational wedges. Why are we falling for this? You know, we the American people are not each other’s enemies. It’s the people who are driving all the wedges where are the enemies, divide and conquer is their strategy. We have to be smarter than that.” And “I like people who are willing to say what they believe. It’s perhaps gotten me in some trouble over the last several months, but I’m still going to say what I believe. I’ve learned how to tone it down a little bit so people can actually hear what I’m saying and not just focus on the words, but that’s a skill that people learn with the course of time. But there’s no question that we in the process in this country have given away all of our values and principles for the sake of political correctness, and as a result of that we’re in a tailspin.”
He continued, “I think the Republicans actually need to engage in this conversation. A few weeks ago, went to the National Association for Latino Elected Officials, got a conference in Las Vegas, spoke to them, told them that I wasn’t changing my speech because I’m in front of a different audience, and presented lots of different programs. I said I know you guys aren’t just interested in immigration, and they were very receptive, and I got another lot of very warm comments. I think we have to go into all the different communities and we have to talk, we have to present logical reasons for people to not buy into the propaganda that is utilized to simply keep them in a state of dependency and control and and culling their votes. We don’t want to that, people are smarter than that.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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