Rick Perry and Arizona Proves He's Soft on Immigration

Some have assumed that when Perry said that the Arizona law “wasn’t the right direction for Texas,” he was taking a position against strict enforcement of immigration laws. Not so – what he actually said was, “I fully recognize and support a state’s right and obligation to protect its citizens, but I have concerns with portions of the law passed in Arizona and believe it would not be the right direction for Texas.” His concern was related to the portion of the Arizona law that required peace officers to inquire about citizenship status. Perry believes that the best solution is to allow officers the discretion to ask if they deem it necessary to carry out their duty.

Texas has a rich history with Mexico, our largest trading partner, and we share more than 1,200 miles of border, more than any other state,” Perry said. “As the debate on immigration reform intensifies, the focus must remain on border security and the federal government' failure to adequately protect our borders. Securing our border is a federal responsibility, but it is a Texas problem, and it must be addressed before comprehensive immigration reform is discussed. Texas has allocated more than $400 million in state funding to secure the border since 2005. In the last legislative session alone, $152 million was earmarked for border security.

Rick Perry has also adopted the National Governor’s Policy, part of which states:

• Federal immigration policies should ensure that new immigrants do not become a public charge to federal, state, or local governments.
• The federal government must provide adequate information to and consult with states on issues concerning immigration decisions that affect the states.
• States should not have to incur significant costs in implementing federal laws regarding immigration status as a condition of benefits.

See the full National Governor's Association policy on immigration here).

In the final analysis, Governor Perry says that the nation cannot have effective immigration policy until the border is secure. Today, the border is not secure and this is where we need to focus our resources.

Rick Perry shares his view on the illegal immigration issue in his book, Fed Up! written in 2010 (from the Kindle edition, pages 118-119):

We can have all the immigration debates we want, but Americans are demanding that the border be secured first.

We have already been burned once by false promises of border security in exchange for tying security to other aspects of the immigration debate. President Regan, in 1986, signed the immigration reform and control act, which legalized close to 3 million undocumented immigrants. The law was supposed to be a comprehensive solution with provisions intended to clamp down on border security.

These provisions were never enforced, and the subsequent explosion in illegal crossings has resulted in some 11 million illegal aliens living in the United States today an estimated 1.8 million illegal immigrants are currently residing in Texas, compared with 1.1 million in 2000. In ten years, that represents an increase of 54 percent or 70,000 persons each year coming to our state illegally.

Today, the Pew Hispanic Center estimates that about one in ten people born in Mexico live in the United States. And all of this has occurred outside the system and to the disadvantage of others who have been waiting in line for many years. There are literally millions of people waiting to get into the country legally.

No other candidate has a record as real as Rick Perry's on immigration. Think about this. None of the other candidates have ever been in a position to have to deal with the Mexico-U.S. border on a policy or executive level. I think Perry's words above carry more weight on the general direction he will take on immigration policy than other candidates. Perry walks the walk.

Here’s a link to On The Issues which has more references to Perry’s statements on immigration-related subjects (too many to include here.