Immigration and Texas governor Rick Perry: a summary

Tom Tancredo has a summary of Texas governor Rick Perry and immigration (link). All sixteen paragraphs point out ways in which Perry supports or enables illegal immigration, here are just the first five:

When I ran for president in 2008, I tried to pressure the Republican candidates to take a hard line against illegal immigration. For this, Perry called me a racist.

When he first took office as governor in 2001, Perry went to Mexico and bragged about his law that granted "the children of undocumented workers" special in-state tuition at Texas colleges, the first state in the nation to do so.

"The message is simple," Perry concluded, "educacion es el futuro, y si se puede." Education is the future, and (echoing Cesar Chavez's slogan) yes we can.]

Just a few weeks ago, Perry defended his decision to give in-state tuition to illegal immigrants. He said "to punish these young Texans for their parents' actions is not what America has always been about."

Perry opposed Arizona's tough anti-illegal immigration law SB 1070. "I have concerns," he explained, "with portions of the law passed in Arizona and believe it would not be the right direction for Texas."

Tancredo also mentions the TransTexas Corridor, a scheme that Perry created. See that, NAFTA Superhighway, and North American Union. While the Beltway has been quite effective at mocking concerns about the latter scheme, a previously secret document revealed by Wikileaks showed that the Bush administration was working on "integrating" the three North American countries.

And, see Rick Perry for more.

Note: the article is titled "Rick Perry not a true conservative", which is open to debate. The article only concentrates on immigration issues, despite controlling illegal immigration and reducing legal immigration aren't inherently conservative. And, those who nowadays call themselves and are presented as True Conservatives are libertarian-leaning fiscal conservatives. Nowadays, the word "conservative" doesn't mean so much those who are socially or culturally conservative, but simply fiscal cons like the tea parties. And, the top leaders of that group are as bad as or worse than Perry on immigration: see Koch family, FreedomWorks, and Grover Norquist.

UPDATE: Here's part of an interview conducted in Fall 2010 after Perry's book 'Fed Up!' was released (link). In it - after much verbage about securing the border - Perry reveals that he would support legalizing illegal aliens after the border is secure:

Q. OK. Moving on. Many Tea Partiers want to repeal the 14th Amendment, which provides for birthright citizenship. Do you agree with them?

Perry: Again, I think it's one of those that you put out there and have a discussion on the issue. But the 14th Amendment was clearly put in place during a period of time when we had individual coming into the country, and it served its purpose. Is it being abused today? It may be. But from the standpoint of does it rise to the level of having a constitutional prohibition or removal of that, probably not.

Q. You mentioned border security, earlier. You're the governor of a border state and have been for some time. As you write in the book, Ronald Reagan signed a bill in 1986 trying to reform immigration that didn't work out—the borders security provisions weren't enforced—then President George W. Bush tried again and could get it through Congress because “people had been to that rodeo before.” Is there a possible path to pursued in two parts: first, a measure that establishes stricter border security and then, and only then, a later measure that provides a pathway to citizenship for the millions of immigrants who are here illegally? A one-two punch.

Perry: We have a pathway to citizenship in this country today: it's get in the line and do what it takes to get here legally. You cannot have a comprehensive discussion about immigration reform until you secure the border. I've got a 1,200 mile border with Mexico and it's not secure. We have American citizens being killed, we have drugs coming across, we have illegal immigrations and all types of other human trafficking going on. Our border is not secure because our federal government has been an abject failure at it.

Q. I think everyone can agree on that, but...

Perry: Here's what everyone should agree on: get the border secure, then we can have a conversation about what type immigration policy we want to put in place. If there's a revolving door at the border, your immigration policy is not worth the paper it's written on.

Q. But just to be clear: if border security is accomplished, you can envision some sort of path to citizenship for people who are here illegally.

Perry: Sure.