From The Los Angeles Times profile of Tom Tancredo:
Tancredo’s immigration prescription is simple. First, secure the borders, doing whatever it takes. Build a fence — or two or three — along the perimeter with Canada and Mexico. Station armed guards to block illegal entry. Then, go after businesses that hire illegal workers, hitting employers with massive fines and, if need be, criminal charges.
Also, bring criminal cases — aiding and abetting — against mayors and city council members who establish "sanctuary cities" that prevent city employees from cooperating with federal immigration agents. (Yes, that would have included Republican Rudolph W. Giuliani, back when he was mayor of New York.)
Once the jobs dry up, the estimated 12 million people in the country illegally — or 20 million, by Tancredo’s count — will go home. No need for the jackboot immigration raids that are conjured up by his many critics.
"Attrition through enforcement," Tancredo called it, sipping green iced tea on a shady patio before opening his campaign office in Ames, home of Iowa State University. "If people cannot get the thing for which they came — a job — they go home."
Some look at the immigration issue and see a complicated and confounding tangle of interests and emotions. Not Tancredo.
"I have a solution," he told a Friday night crowd of about 100 at the Quality Inn in downtown Des Moines. "It’s a radical one. Scary. Enormously controversial." Then he paused and spaced his words for effect. "It’s called: Enforce … the … law."
Blunt talk like that is a big part of Tancredo’s appeal.
To Belinda Lawler, it’s simple. When she called the offices of Iowa’s U.S. senators, the pharmaceutical consultant from Gilbert demanded: "What part of the term ‘illegal alien’ don’t you understand?"
