The Morning Blend
Welcome
Complete Media Kit
HEREFORD — Presidential candidate and U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo told supporters gathered at a private ranch here Friday that American culture, as well as the fate of western civilization, is being threatened by illegal immigration.
“This is so much bigger than the cost (of illegal immigration) to our schools, and other issues like that that we know are true,” Tancredo told the crowd of approximately 150 people assembled at a fund-raising barbecue hosted by Glenn Spencer, head of the civilian border watch group American Border Patrol.
“There’s an issue that is so much broader than all that, so much more serious. It is the issue of our culture itself, and whether we will survive.”
Tancredo, a Colorado Republican who has built a small but loyal nationwide following with his tough talk on border issues, told the audience that comprehensive immigration reform is “just a euphemism.”
 Tom Tancredo, a U.S. congressman from Colorado and a Republican presidential candidate, chats with Marana resident Joann Hunt at a Friday evening cookout in Tancredo’s honor. The event was held on Glenn Spencer’s Hereford ranch. (Mark Levy-Herald/Review) |
“All that means is amnesty,” he said.
He also questioned the need for more guest worker visas, saying Americans will do menial labor if employers pay them a decent wage.
Tancredo did not mention specifics of his own plan for solving the illegal immigration problem. Instead, he said that when people ask him what his solution is, he tells them simply: “Enforce the law.”
Border security is not just about illegal immigration, Tancredo said. It is also a matter of national security.
He told the audience about his trip in 2004 to Beslan, Russia, shortly after Islamic terrorists from Chechnya killed more than 300 people there during a three-day hostage siege at an elementary school. He recalled visiting the school, which was still smoldering after a bomb blast, and seeing townspeople digging hundreds of graves for their dead.
“I tell you this story for a reason,” he said. “As I come down here through Sierra Vista toward the border, I am telling you that there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that guarantees that the same kind of thing can’t happen here in the United States.”
“And why could it happen?” he asked. “Because our borders are not defended.”
Tancredo’s call for greater border enforcement appealed to Toni Arena, a fifth-generation Arizonan who splits her time between homes in Hereford and Portal. Arena said she has seen an alarming increase in violence and criminal activity from illegal border-crossers during recent years.
“We’ve been made hostages here,” she said. “We can’t leave our homes because the minute we do, they get broken into.”
Bill Odle and his wife Ellen Logue came to the barbecue from their borderfront property in Palominas, which they said has suffered little from illegal immigration. The couple said they didn’t know much about Tancredo, but had been encouraged by friends to learn more.
“I want a fence, I want vehicle barriers, and I want enforcement against those who hire people that are not supposed to be here,” Odle said, adding he is opposed to a border wall, which he believes would be ineffective, unsightly and un-American.
“We cheer when walls go down, not when they go up,” he said.
Some attendees asked Tancredo to sign copies of his book, “In Mortal Danger.” Jon Healy, a musician from Sierra Vista, gave Tancredo a CD copy of an original song called “No Apologies,” which he based on one of the candidate’s speeches.
“This is a nation we built with our blood, sweat and tears,” Healy said, “and we’re going to take it back. This man is going to save our country if he gets elected.”
Tancredo urged the audience to show their support for Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, two Texas-based Border Patrol agents who were sentenced to prison earlier this year for convictions on assault with a dangerous weapon, discharge of a firearm in commission of a crime, and tampering with a crime scene after they shot an unarmed drug smuggler in the buttocks.
“Instead of giving these people a medal for what they were doing on that border, they put them in jail,” Tancredo said. “Does this make any sense to anybody?”
Ramos’ mother and father-in-law drove from El Paso, Texas, to attend the event.
Asked earlier what he thought of Cochise County Attorney Ed Rheinheimer’s recent decision to charge Naco-based Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Corbett with murdering an illegal immigrant in January, Tancredo said he did not know enough about Corbett’s case to comment.
HERALD/REVIEW reporter Jonathan Clark can be reached at 515-4693 or by e-mail at jonathan.clark@bisbeereview.net.
Gerri Mac wrote on May 19, 2007 10:35 PM: