(2000)
Here's another blast from the past, the year 2000, more pertinent today than ever:
QUESTION: Mr. Ambassador, thank you for being the beacon of morality for this country. [applause] Our country is the envy of the world, despite the many problems that we have, and it seems that our borders are--there's a tremendous problem with the borders of illegal immigration. And it has great taxing effect, particularly in the areas near those borders. Can you address--the political side has done nothing about it over the years. I lived in San Diego for a number of years, and it seems that nothing was ever done, even though there was a lot of talk about it. What would be your approach to immigration? Particularly, illegal immigration?KEYES: Well, I would wanna make that distinction because, unlike some folks, I am not against immigration, per se. And I think there are objective reasons why it's kinda hypocritical anyway for Americans to be against immigration, since so many folks here are the result of immigration. Now, some people might say I have a better excuse than any to be against immigration, since my ancestors immigrated here by force, as it were. [laughter]
But nonetheless, I think you look at the reality and we, all of us--many of us, anyway--came from somewhere else. They tell me that even the Native Americans (I'm part Cherokee, long way back), Native Americans, they tell me, if you go far enough back--even Native Americans crossed the Bearing Strait over from Asia. You're going back pretty far then, no? So, in a certain sense, the whole New World is populated by immigrants from somewhere else, and I don't believe we should insult the truth of that heritage by pretending that it's done us some harm. It hasn't.
It is a great asset if we manage it responsibly. It still gives us access to things that increase the talent, but also, I think, increase the value that we place even on our own institutions. Because, it doesn't at all hurt that in every generation, we get an influx of folks coming from parts of the world with less freedom into a part of the world with more--who walk the world for a few years and just say, "I love this place!" That's a good thing. It reminds those of us who might take it for granted of the value of what we've got. So, I'm not against immigration, per se. But, I do believe that it has to be carefully regulated, so that it does not damage our quality of life, destroy our infrastructure. I think we are, in a way, the urban area of the world. And, if you look at a lot of the countries around the world, like Mexico and India and places like this, urban areas become a magnet for the people from the less developed rural areas. And they come in such large numbers that the infrastructures of the cities break down, and they can't handle it. We don't want America to become a large-scale version of that breakdown. And so, we've got to be responsible. We've got to act on behalf of the great trust which, I believe, we have for humanity in terms of the welfare of this country.
So, you limit immigration through the law and then--here's the key part, and know this is hard, so brace yourselves. This is a very unusual suggestion I'm gonna make. It'll come hard. You'll think I'm really radical and wonder how it is that I could ever hope to do anything in politics. But I think the key to dealing with our immigration challenge is to enforce the law. [laughter and applause]
Now, I know--wait, see. You're ready to throw brickbats at me. No. Consider the laws are on the books. But we have so many folks who want us to act as though they don't exist, and we should not respect the distinction between illegal and legal immigration. We must. And if we don't, then we ourselves are undermining the laws. They become not even empty words. They become worse than that.
And so, we've got to enforce the law. That requires cooperation from state and local governments. And it requires cooperation from private business. It also requires a willingness to react firmly to those levels of government and to those businesses that violate the law. That's what enforcing the law is all about. Now, in many areas of this country, you have people who are winkin' and connivin' at illegal immigration, because somebody's who's powerful in their political scene or in their economic scene is, well, pulling the strings. If it's bad for the country, then we're gonna have to have leaders at the national level with the integrity to enforce national responsibility, even in the face of those state and local political obstacles.
In this area, it is the responsibility of the federal government. We have a federal government who's been willing to take on all kinds of responsibility that they shouldn't have. They want to take over education. They want to dictate law enforcement, and this and that. It's not their job. But the defense of this country and the integrity of its borders is the job of the federal government and they ought to do it with courage and responsibility. [applause]
Having said that, though, I hope that everyone will realize it's part of the reason that I believe in conducting politics the way I do. Some people tell me that it may never succeed to just go out there, state what you think is right, and try to get enough people on your side to make it happen. But, if you do it that way, people are very clear about exactly what you stand for, that if you ever do get elected nobody will be unclear about what's coming. And in the area of immigration, if Alan Keyes ever gets elected to the White House, state and local governments can expect to find a federal government that will be very hard about the business of looking you in the eye and saying, "Not a penny comes from us, if you won't cooperate in enforcing the integrity of our borders." And I'll be clear and strict about it. [applause]
It's time we stopped payin' lip service. I think we should also encourage--this would be done at the state level through the political coalition we represented--we encourage at the state level, we encourage in a proper form at the national level the implementation of the ideas that were in Proposition 187. I know there are people who somehow like to argue that if you're somehow in favor of something like that, where you're essentially saying to illegal immigrants, "We are not going to treat you as if you're legal immigrants; we're certainly not going to treat you as citizens." And they like to say, "Well, that's being discriminatory. That's awful. That's bigoted." What's going on in this country? Have we lost our minds? We put laws on the books, and then when people break the law, we consider ourselves wicked folks because we enforce it. I was particularly struck by this during the Proposition 187 debates some years ago. Because, the Mexican government, they have a representative in California, he was speaking out about how terrible this was because somehow it was going to be discriminatory against folks coming over from Mexico.
Unfortunately for somebody like myself, having worked in the international arena and at one time having done a fair amount of work in this very area, I knew that if you want to find a government that's as hard as nails when it comes to the question of immigration into its country, the status of aliens, most people who are actually are legal aliens in Mexico have only very limited and truncated rights, in terms of what they can do, contracts they can enter into, and so forth and so on. If you're illegal, they don't even take the time of day to explain it to you. They just put your butt on the latest thing out of town, and off you go. And no apologies accepted. No long administrative tribunals. No rights. Nothin' else.
And I'm watchin' as the representative of this government, tough as nails in enforcing its own law, dares to get on a high horse and tell us that we can't take rudimentary steps to enforce our own. This is absurd. We don't have to feel badly about it. We are, in fact, meeting our responsibility to people all over the world who come to this country with a sense of hope by not making stupid mistakes that will destroy the reality of that hope. It's our stewardship responsibility to do this in the right way. [applause]
