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OPINION

Earth to Gov. Perry: True "Heart" Means No Benefits to Illegals

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
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It goes without saying that Rick Perry alienated the base he needs to win last week with his “no heart” on lllegal immigrants comment at the Fox News/Google debate.

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Either he’s completely deaf to the concerns of real conservatives, or he’s taking our vote for granted.

Either way, he’s headed in the wrong direction, as his poor showing in the Florida straw poll demonstrates.

I honestly don’t have a simple solution for teens who are brought here illegally as children, but then again, I’m not running for President. Send them home? Home where? Let them stay? You’re rewarding their parents’ lawbreaking, and encouraging the next wave of parents to do the same.

It’s a conundrum, to be sure. But offering in-state tuition, or any other type of special benefits That’s an easy one: NO.

Why hasn’t anyone asked the most obvious question of all? If the kids are “in limbo”, without legal status, why bother subsidizing an education for them, when they can’t legally work in the U.S. and won’t be able to repay? And with unemployment so high among native born teens, why should we add millions more to the pool of job applicants?

Governor Perry doesn’t seem to understand principle. When cornered about the HPV vaccine, his response was akin to “if it will save one life”...oh brother.

Our worst legislation comes from that perspective. Tell me, Governor, is it okay to have mandates about anything, whether legislative or executive, just because someone might die? Since when is that a conservative value? Don’t we have enough bad laws?

No one wants illegal teens left in limbo, but what does that have to do with government subsidization of their education? Come to think of it, why should I subsidize anyone’s college education, native born or otherwise?

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Whatever happened to investing in yourself?

Governor Perry had the chance to say- since his heart is apparently as big as the Texas taxpayers’ checkbook- that although he doesn’t want to punish those kids, they should not be subsidized by taxpayers. But instead he took a swipe at those of us who do see the principle at stake.

Big mistake, Mr. Perry.

We have a heart, we’re just tapped out.

“The path to citizenship” is an entirely different issue from taxpayer funded benefits, which in my opinion is the ONLY way to solve the illegal immigration problem.

You’ll have far fewer ants coming into your house if  you don’t leave sweets lying around. Sure, the worker ants will fan out to do recon, but if they don’t find any “handouts”, they’ll go elsewhere; and they certainly won’t come back with reinforcements.

I’m not comparing illegal immigrants to ants, but the principle is the same.

Eliminating government handouts in any form; WIC, SNAP, housing, education, etc., will, by attrition, greatly reduce our illegal immigration problem. Politicians on both sides have looked me in the eye many times and sworn that “illegals don’t qualify for benefits.”

But they do, as soon as they have a child born in the U.S.

The guy coming in to pick fruit in the Imperial Valley doesn’t really worry me. We’ve always had agricultural, seasonal migration. What’s changed in the last 100 years are the additional incentives for them to stay and bring their families here, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer.

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Subsidized education, medical care and housing for the entire family of a migrant, including “anchor babies” is what’s killing us, and it’s our fault if we continue those policies.

Americans have passed these laws and allowed these programs to get completely out of control. This should be addressed honestly by our next President.

Although the entire problem can’t be solved by cutting these programs, if the only illegals we had left were at least pulling their own weight, Americans would be far less concerned.

Governor Perry and the other candidates need to stop talking about “controlling the border” or “building a wall” and get serious about what WILL solve many of the problems uncontrolled immigration causes.

Cutting programs is cheaper than building the Great Wall of Texas.

So let’s review: true conservatives don’t erode everyone’s rights to “save lives”, nor do they allow misguided compassion to subsidize lawbreakers.

Governor Perry, don’t take conservative voters for granted. We have other choices.

Besides I’m an unabashed Cain-iac anyway.


John Ransom | Create Your Badge

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