Shadegg Will Oppose New Big-Government Programs

If President Bush comes to you as majority leader and asks you to get as many votes as you can for a guest worker program that allows illegal aliens to stay here in the United States, will you get votes for the President on a bill like that?

REP. SHADEGG: The immigration issue is interesting in that a lot of the terms get confused. I am absolutely opposed to any form of amnesty, which would encourage illegals to enter the country in the future in the hope that they will be given a dispensation, or otherwise be allowed to stay even though they got here illegally. Amnesty is clearly not in the interest of the American government or people because it is a fundamental offense against the rule of law. Any time you grant anything that can even be looked at as an amnesty, you encourage more people to come illegally. I will not in anyway support something that I consider to be an amnesty.

We need to engage in enforcement at the border. At some point we need to move forward with greater workplace enforcement. And at some point we will need to address the issue of whether anybody should be allowed to come into the country legally to work at some point in the future. But that should not be an amnesty, and that should be considered after we have achieved security at the border and it should be based on what level of outside workers ought to allowed in lawfully, not how many of the people who are here illegally should be allowed to stay. Particularly, I don't think anybody here illegally should be essentially given a carte blanche to stay in the country.

Copyright Human Events Publishing, Inc. Jan 23, 2006
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