Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk told Breitbart News that “huge reforms need to happen” with hard line policies regarding both legal and illegal immigration “if we’re serious about saving this country.” Kirk spoke to host Alex Marlow in a Wednesday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily.
“The reporting that Breitbart has been doing so consistently for the last, seven, eight, ten years on the cartels, I think helped President Trump come to this conclusion,” said Kirk of President Trump’s recent announcement that he would designate Mexican drug cartels as terror organizations.
“The southern border has become one of the most dangerous places on our continent because of the cartels,” he added, “and this is more than just a talking point — designating them as a terror organization — this will allow the seizure of assets, this will allow many different options to be used against what is, quite honestly, a very, very dangerous terrorist organization.”
Listen below:
Kirk also noted that drug cartels do things that organizations the U.S. fights overseas wouldn’t even do, “to women, to children — they just killed nine Americans a couple weeks ago.”
“Look at how quickly the media moved on from not covering the fact that nine missionaries in Mexico were killed in cold blood by these terror organizations,” he added.
Kirk also mentioned that both Republicans and Democrats have ignored the issue of immigration, which he says is probably the number one issue going into the 2020 election season.
The TPUSA founder added that big issues needing to be addressed include cartels, building the wall, fixing the legal immigration system, passing the RAISE Act, and limiting the amount of green cards that are issued.
“But I have to say,” said Kirk, “Breitbart has been ahead of the curve here, Alex, it seems like you guys are kind of the leading indicator of where these issues come, and for years you guys were talking about the crisis and immigration in our country, and I think a lot of the American people are waking up to it.”
What’s been so admirable that Breitbart has done — and the coverage of this, it’s been so factual — about how immigrant and illegal immigrant families actually are more likely to go on public assistance in certain states, and showing that how Americans have to subsidize that, and also, the crimes committed by illegal aliens, and so people are starting to realize that if you don’t have sovereignty of the nation, you don’t have control over who comes into your country, there’s all sorts of different costs, both financial and cultural, that have to be absorbed the citizens.
Kirk also addressed the recent push by some people on the Internet to paint him as someone who is weak on immigration.
“I’m a huge fan of the RAISE Act,” added Kirk of his stance on immigration. “I was an early adopter of the idea of ending birthright citizenship — ending birthright citizenship would be very important in the sense that people are coming here [and] having ‘tourism babies,’ as Ann Coulter puts it — ending chain migration, and the Visa lottery.”
This is a huge issue in our country, and people, unfortunately, I think have gone out of their way to misrepresent some things that I said, where I said I want a point system, and a merit-based system in our country, but I’m in full agreement, Alex, with anyone who wants to secure our border, and also limit the amount of Visa’s that we’re issuing, and if we are going to be issuing Visas — which we’re probably going to be issuing some Visas — that we want very a competitive process for that, and the president has really championed this.
“Immigration — both legal and illegal — huge reforms need to happen if we’re serious about saving this country,” affirmed Kirk.
“And don’t just take my word for it,” he added, “the Washington Post and the New York Times were basically running victory laps — saying that mass and uncontrolled legal immigration contributed to Virginia becoming a deep blue state. They were basically giddy about it.”
“And so, there are some very serious ramifications that can happen if we’re not serious about fixing our immigration system,” said Kirk, adding that he believes the U.S. should start restricting the number of green cards that are issued, “which is something that I think really needs to be looked heavily at by the Republicans in Congress.”
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.