CNN Lou Dobbs Tonight - Transcript
CNN Lou Dobbs Tonignt
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DOBBS: Lisa, thank you very much. Lisa Sylvester as always, great reporting.
This broadcast has commissioned a comprehensive nationwide poll on illegal immigration and border security and the legislation being debated in Washington. As far as I know this is the most comprehensive poll conducted on these issues in decades. And the survey, conducted by opinion research, definitively gauges American attitudes on these critical issues.
We're going to examine five of the questions tonight, and tonight, looking at the first result, 54 percent of those surveyed say children of illegal aliens born in this country should automatically receive American citizenship, 40 percent disagree.
Nearly 60 percent say the government of Mexico has encouraged illegal immigration into this country. Only 18 percent believe the government of Mexico discourages illegal aliens. It has just about 25 million of its citizens in this country now.
Fully 83 percent of Americans surveyed said the government of Mexico has not done enough to stop the flow of illegal drugs into this country. Overwhelming, and more than two-thirds say the Mexican government is responsible for the illegal drugs coming into the United States.
And on the question of making English the official language of the United States, fully three-quarters of all Americans surveyed favor making English the official language. Congressman Mike Pence is the chairman of the House Republican Study Committee. He's written compromise immigration legislation he says could break the deadlock on immigration reform in Congress. His legislation includes an illegal alien guest-worker program, but he says it strictly rules out amnesty. Congressman Pence joins us tonight from Capitol Hill. Congressman Pence, good to have you with us.
REP. MIKE PENCE (R), INDIANA: Thank you, Lou.
DOBBS: Let's start with the deadlock. I will tell you, categorically, the Senate bill is, in my judgment, something that, if any legislation could be dismissed out of hand by your speaker, your leader, Congressman Sensenbrenner and declared dead on arrival it is that legislation. How do you feel?
PENCE: I couldn't agree with you more, Lou, and appreciate your leadership on it. House members, me included, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee and the speaker are categorically opposed to amnesty and the Senate passed an amnesty bill. Amnesty by any other name where we let individuals get right with the law and stay in this country to do it is not acceptable to the American people. And it is not acceptable to the majority of members of the House of Representatives.
DOBBS: And the compromise that you're putting forward, be a compromise between what? If you would articulate that for us.
PENCE: Well, I appreciate it. My bill, which is all available on my Web site, emerged in a speech at the Heritage Foundation a couple weeks ago. Basically most of my bill, Lou, is everything we passed out of the House of Representatives last December, about 280 pages, includes virtually everything in the border security measures, all of the tough enforcement ...
DOBBS: Let's put that up, if we may, Congressman.
PENCE: Thank you.
DOBBS: You say that would you secure the border.
PENCE: That's right. Well, we do everything in the House bill to secure the border.
DOBBS: I'm sorry, Congressman, I spoke over you. Say again.
PENCE: Thank you. Well, we do everything that the House legislation adopted last December does to secure the border. And my proposal is, Lou, that for the first two years after enactment, all we do is secure the border, and build the fence and deploy the UAV and build the additional capacity and have additional border patrols. A nation without borders is not a nation. That has to come first.
But we also do employer sanctions. And then the nuance here is that as someone who strongly rejects amnesty, I think like most Americans, I've proposed that we work with the private sector to establish what we call Ellis Island Centers outside the United States, where people outside the country or people in this country illegally could apply for a legal right to be here from outside America, and that means it's not amnesty.
DOBBS: Congressman, my reaction on a couple of points here is the guest-worker part of this program, we are witnessing right now wages falling in the lowest wage scales in this country, suggesting definitively, by any economic theory, even Washington economists, that we have a surplus of labor not a shortage of it. The idea of a guest- worker program, what -- what is driving that?
PENCE: Well, I think what's driving it, Lou, is I think you used the 20 million number, the number we talk about on the Hill is 10 million to 12 million illegal immigrants that are in this country, working, you know, what we ...
DOBBS: We use 11 million to 20 million, Congressman.
PENCE: What we see in Indiana, what, frankly, folks see all over the country is people who have over the last 20 years stepped in to our labor force in many positions where -- and many areas where there's been a labor shortage. And in my judgment, we ought to come up with an orderly new guest-worker program that will meet the need, but we can't do that with amnesty or we undermine our nation's commitment to the rule of law.
DOBBS: Yes, well, I think this Congress, Congressman, has undermined this nation's commitment to the rule of law, and this president and the previous president have absolutely insulted the American people and are not obeying the law, not insisting that it be enforced, and if you would like to correct the record on that, I'd be glad to hear it. Because that is exactly what this Congress and this president have done.
PENCE: Well, it's been a great frustration as a conservative member of the House Judiciary Committee. I helped write that enforcement-first bill that we passed last December that focused on tough employer sanctions and border security.
But, you know, I'm someone who believes that creating a new guest-worker program outside the country, not with amnesty, Lou, would be a way of meeting the needs of our marketplace without undermining the law and achieving -- here's the big deal. And finding a way with the situation we have in the Senate today, to get this border secured and get new enforceable sanctions on the books.
DOBBS: You know when you say marketplace, Congressman, I get really nervous, because I don't hear enough frankly of you-all in Washington, Republican or Democrat, the Senate or the House, talk about this nation. This is not a marketplace. This is not an economy. We're not consumers, we're not just workers, we're citizens.
Congress has moved so far away from the idea that this is a nation, a country, and looking upon all of us as either consumers or workers rather than citizens. I get very nervous about that. Let me say one thing to you, Congressman, if I may, and I've just been give then quote from Congressman Tom Tancredo, one of the leading anti- illegal immigration advocates, as you know.
He says of your plan, "It gives the administration exactly what it wants: unlimited foreign workers first, enforcement later or never. Pence's plan is the '86 amnesty with a trip home tacked on."
PENCE: Yes, and you know, Lou, that's actually not a very fair reflection of my proposal. In my proposal, we actually do border security first. The whole first two years are all security, and it's not a trip tacked on home. We would require people who are illegal in this country, to go to an Ellis Island center outside the United States, submit to a background check, be a private placement and go through health screening.
DOBBS: That would be a privately-owned outfit, right?
PENCE: Well, you know, I want -- we've got a lot of companies in this country that do private placement every day of the week. The people that manage your credit card, the data management. We certainly don't want to look to a failed government bureaucracy to manage this new guest-worker program or quite frankly, it will fail us as much as the bureaucracy failed us last time.
DOBBS: I'm with you on the bureaucracy. There's not a dime being put forward in the Senate legislation that, according to Senator Judd Gregg, that will move to border security. The fact is, we got failed bureaucracies because we're not managing this government. But to put the idea of putting our immigration law in the hands of private enterprise, I'm sorry I just...
PENCE: We wouldn't put it in the hands of private enterprise, Lou.
DOBBS: ... This country is getting eaten alive from the left and the right, the Democratic and the Republican side by this libertarian fatalism that doesn't recognize we've got a role for government.
PENCE: Lou, if I may.
DOBBS: You may.
PENCE: The Department of Homeland Security would manage the new guest-worker program. The FBI would do all of the background check, the State Department would issue the visa. What I'm talking about, really is using the people in America, the companies that do data management and data dragging and employment placement and tracking every day of the week to do it, because, frankly, the government bureaucracy got us into this mess. We ought to look to the private sector to help us get out of it.
DOBBS: I would just disagree with you on one small point. It's the elected representatives we've sent to Washington and the White House, Congress and the Senate that have gotten us into this mess, and apparently don't have the guts or the innovation to understand there's a role for government and a role for U.S. citizens and hard-working men and women in this country who demand their government serve them. PENCE: Yes, I'll tell you, Lou, I really want to agree with you. That I think, to date, the Congress and this government has failed to address this issue.
DOBBS: Right.
PENCE: What I want to suggest is that we can get control of our borders. We can have tough sanctions.
DOBBS: Right.
PENCE: Then we can meet the needs of our country for labor with -- without amnesty, and we bring innovation and new ideas to doing that. And I hope people will go to my Web site and check out the Pence plan, and, Lou, I hope you do, too.
DOBBS: I already have, partner.
PENCE: Thank you.
DOBBS: I appreciate it, Congressman, thank you.
PENCE: Thank you.
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