Where was the radio discussion of how Tancredo’s high-school graduation requirements align with his immigration position?
Just after gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo departed from from KNUS’ Peter Boyles show this morning, where Boyles told his listeners, “If there’s a god, [Tancredo] becomes governor,” Tancredo talked about immigration with Dan Caplis, whose KNUS radio show starts right after Boyles’.
Caplis: If you had that power, right now, what would you do with the folks who are already here?
Tancredo: …I think everyone who applies for a job in this country should have to be here legally and should have to prove that. Now, certainly, would there be hardships? I have no doubt. But a decision was made when the person came here illegally. I mean, that decision brought with it a lot of ramifications. One is that indeed you may end up having to leave at some point in time. And that means a lot of things to a lot of different people. Leave I-don’t-know-what behind, you know, familiar relationships and all that sort of thing. But you have to determine that you are ok with the idea that people who are here illegally would have to go home. [BigMedia emphasis]
Tancredo isn’t shy about discussing his proposed e-verify solution to the immigration problem, whereby employers would have to run the Social Security numbers of potential employees through a national database prior to hiring them, but Tancredo usually doesn’t mention the “hardships” involved for the undocumented immigrants.
Below, in a 2011 video shot during Tancredo’s 2011 presidential run, Tancredo said, “All you have to do is restrict the ability of an employer to give a job to somebody who is here illegally. People self deport when that happens. It happened in Arizona.”
Today on the radio, Tancredo again said that his e-verify solution “in effect” is “self-deportation,” but his heart peeked through when he talked about the “hardships” of leaving “familiar relationships,” which obviously include children, fathers, mothers, nieces, uncles, neighbors, teachers, entire communities in the most personal sense and beyond. Those are the human hardships involved.
Ironically, Tancredo began his interview with Caplis by saying that, as governor, he’d mandate that, as a high-school graduation requirement, all Colorado students be able “to articulate an appreciation for western civilization, American exceptionalism, and the Constitution.”
Absent was a discussion of how destroying the families and communities of undocumented immigrants fits in with Tancredo’s proposed high-school-graduation criteria.