Illegal Immigration is "illegal"

I am driving home, I am tired, and it has been a bit of a difficult day. What does a political junkie like me do? Drive to a presidential candidate town hall meeting for some potentially interesting entertainment :-)

Tom Tancredo was speaking at a town hall meeting in Merrimack. He is a fringe republican candidate, who has said he is running because of the illegal immigration issue. I had been intending to go listen to some republican candidates as well, and here was a good chance. (One of the things that makes the New Hampshire primary interesting is the fact that independents can vote. Generally only registered democrats vote in the democratic primary and only registered republicans vote in the republican primary, but in New Hampshire independents can vote in either one. Which is also why candidates like to focus on New Hampshire because it can somewhat reflect how the independents will vote, and that group is critical in the general election).

There were about 25-30 people in Merrimack town hall, making it a chatty living room type atmosphere. Tancredo started speaking, said he was a second-tier candidate, but stood a chance in New Hampshire because grassroots campaigning cost much less than TV campaigning (and a win or a good place in New Hampshire can give a candidate tremendous momentum in later primary states). He talked about his children and grand-children. So far, so good.

Then he began to speak about illegal immigration. I generally try to understand the other person’s point of view, but as time progressed, it got a bit scary (well, I was not really scared, but you get the idea, I did begin to feel that I was the only non-white in the room….hmmm…. maybe I was OK since I was born in the US ;-)). During the first part of his talk he focused on how illegal immigrants were involved in crime, and gave a couple of anecdotal incidents. Anecdotal incidents do not make up statistics, but I desisted from asking that question as I really did not want to take up time on a question, when I was not going to vote for him. Anyway, he continued, and began to come out strongly against sanctuary cities (which have decided to help illegal immigrants by giving then an identity card, making them feel welcome, helping them, and so on), at which point there was applause. He said that the illegal immigrants had broken the law, and so were the sanctuary cities by helping them. Well, I did not agree with him, but I have heard a sort of similar viewpoint from very sensible American friends - that illegal immigrants were “breaking the law”, and this is something Americans do not like at all, as they set a huge store on living according to the rule of law. He applauded the town of Merrimack for voting against bilingual language boards, and a local police chief for arresting an illegal immigrant (and I think in the process turning him over to the immigration authorities). Again I did not agree with these points of view, but I know they exist. What he then talked about was what made the whole thing become weird. He talked about being a nation-state, about the importance of the identify of a nation. He talked about clear political boundaries, and how they should be respected. He that Mexicans coming in was an “act of aggression” since they would soon come and make the US more like Mexico. He talked about how the President of Mexico was fully aware of this but would not do anything to change it, rather implied to Bush that Mexico had rights north of the Mexican border. He said Bush is an internationalist, who cares more about trade than a nation’s borders – that is, in Bush’s mind regions are demarcated by trade (which is probably true).

The audience agreed with him (I guess that is why they had come to listen to this candidate), and there were lots of nods as Tancredo touched upon various points. One person in the audience said “these people don’t care about our laws but just come into our country, they don’t care about us”, implying that because they “broke the law” by entering the country, they are all law-breakers, and do not respect the US laws and will continue to break the laws.…..Hmmm…..!! Tancredo himself seemed to connect “violent crime” by illegal immigrants to the fact that they were “law-breakers”.

At the end, I must say it was a bit unsettling to hear this point of view and to see that some people agreed with it. In contrast, when I got lost trying to get to the event, a Merrimack town official left his desk where he was in the middle of doing something and so courteously showed me the right way – I have almost never been made to feel that I do not belong in the US.

Being my first Republican event, I felt it was good that I could see the other side – instead of just going to Obama and Edwards events. We need to know what the other side is thinking! :-) And it is good that people have to a forum to share their thoughts, however much I might disagree with them.

All in all, it was interesting, and as recreational as a movie, without costing a dime!