“Critics say it’s a policy Texans don’t support. But it was overwhelmingly passed by the state legislature in 2001 with just five dissenting votes out of the 181 members in both houses. If that isn’t a majority, and a bipartisan one at that, I don’t know what is.”
2001?????????????
Nice try to distort the issue. Yes, Americans as a whole were more receptive of illegals and amnesty back then (2001), because the tagline was that they were coming her to survive and for a better life, and that they were actively assimilating into American culture, not the other away around. In 2001, there really wasn’t up uproar.
Then around 2004/2005, the illegals started getting bold. They no longer wanted to concentrate on assimiliation. They DEMANDED rights. They started singing the National Anthem in Spanish and protesting in large numbers in majors cities with the Mexican flag. When people started to see that, that’s when the whole issue changed to no Amnesty.
Tancredo’s Opinion Column from August sums up the Majority view now (if it wasn’t the majority view, Perry’s numbers wouldn’t have tanked)
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/61076.html
That's -- I'm running for office, for Pete's sake, I can't have illegals. [video clip] -- Mitt Romney, GOP presidential debate - October 18, 2011 - Las Vegas, NV
Rudy Giuliani asked Mitt Romney the same question in the 2008 CNN debate that Rick Perry asked him during the CNN 2011 debate -- Mitt lost it both times.
Nov 28, 2008 CNN-YouTube Debate: Sound familiar? [LOOK who interrupts whom!!]
Funny Accent Mitt Romney, discussing reports illegal immigrants did landscaping at his home: It would "not be American" to check workers' papers simply because they have a "funny accent." [acknowledges need for giving health care and education to illegals]
Sound familiar? Mike Huckabee, replying to Romney's criticism of providing college scholarships to children of illegal immigrants: "In all due respect, we are a better country than to punish children for what their parents did."
At the same debate: John McCain: "We must recognize these are God's children as well. ... I will enforce the borders first. But we won't demagogue it."