Posted on 12/11/2007 8:11:31 AM PST by TitansAFC
WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Rudy Giuliani says he wanted to deport all 400,000 illegal immigrants from New York City when he was mayor, but ended up welcoming most of those who were “causing me no trouble.”
In an interview for the new book “Meet the Next President,” Giuliani lamented that the Immigration and Naturalization Service deported only 700 to 1,500 of the city’s 400,000 aliens each year during his mayoralty. Giuliani said it was obvious the INS was not about to increase deportation “from 700 or 1,500 to 400,000.”
“If they could, I would have turned all the people over. It would have helped me. I would have had a smaller population. I would have had fewer problems,” the Republican presidential candidate told The Examiner in an interview. “But the practical reality was, they were going to make an infinitesimal, statistically insignificant contribution to the problem. I was stuck with it. And no matter what their promises, they weren’t going to do anything about it.”
In fact, according to Giuliani, the INS told his predecessor, David Dinkins, to stop reporting criminals for deportation. Dinkins complied, even though he had re-issued an executive order by his predecessor, Ed Koch, that called for the reporting of illegals suspected of “engaging in criminal activity.”
When Giuliani took over as mayor, he too re-issued the Koch order.
“Why don’t you throw out the people who are drug dealers, that are coming out of jail? And before they hit the streets, we can turn them over,” Giuliani recalled telling the INS. “We couldn’t work that out with them. They wouldn’t do it for us.
“They wouldn’t do it for us because they had, you know, some professor with a visa first, and they had two restaurant workers, and three gardeners. Now it may or may not be right for them to be here, but they’re not threatening anybody. These drug dealers are threatening people. I couldn’t get them to do that, so I had to handle the thing myself. And I handled it.”
Giuliani handled it by cracking down on illegals who broke more than immigration laws. Meanwhile, he adopted a laissez-faire attitude toward everyone else who entered the United States illegally.
“The ones that are causing me no trouble, I’m going to leave them alone,” he told The Examiner. “They’re contributing to the lawful part of the city. I’ve got so many citizens — legal immigrants, and then some illegal immigrants — committing crimes that I’ve got to pay attention to them.”
Similarly, Giuliani concluded that going after school-age illegals would be an empty political gesture.
“I had sixty-[thousand] to seventy-thousand children in school who were illegal immigrants,” he said. “So for the purpose of protecting my backside, I would turn over the names to the immigration service so I could sound like a tough guy? I would end up with fifty-[thousand] to sixty-thousand kids on the street. And crime would go up in New York, not go down.”
So the mayor resigned himself to the federal government’s inability or unwillingness to deport illegal immigrants. In the process, he absolved himself of any blame for the city’s ongoing status as a haven for 400,000 illegals.
“That’s the federal government’s problem,” he told The Examiner. “If you’re not hurting anybody in my city, I don’t care.”
But Giuliani’s “I don’t care” attitude toward illegals sometimes morphed into unabashed cheerleading, as if he were rolling out the red carpet for them.
“Some of the hardest-working and most productive people in this city are undocumented aliens,” the mayor said at a 1994 press conference. “If you come here and you work hard and you happen to be in an undocumented status, you’re one of the people who we want in this city. You’re somebody that we want to protect, and we want you to get out from under what is often a life of being like a fugitive, which is really unfair.”
The Examiner asked Giuliani why it was unfair to apply fugitive status to someone who broke the law to enter the United States.
“We were going to treat them as a fugitive if they committed a crime,” he replied. “And we weren’t going to treat them like a fugitive if they were being calm and responsible and decent.
“And finally, it didn’t much matter what I did with them,” he added. “The turning over of names to the immigration service was a mere formal act. It was absurd to think that they could possibly handle it. It continues to be absurd.
“In order to deal with the 12 million illegals that are in this country, you would have to take the entire federal, state and local criminal justice systems and multiply it by some factor of seven or eight or nine.”
Instead of attempting such an impossible task, Giuliani said he would concentrate on securing the U.S.-Mexico border if elected president.
Although Giuliani has been savaged by rival Republicans for his record on immigration, he insisted to The Examiner that “immigration is an issue that is not a negative with any Republican voters for me.” He said he wants voters to view his immigration stance in the context of his tough-on-crime credentials.
“My objective was to make New York City safe,” he said. “Illegal immigration and the problem of illegal immigrants was just one of many problems that were part of that whole. So the real question is, did I deal with it intelligently, and did it result in the city becoming much safer? Or did I deal with it stupidly and the city became much more dangerous?”
He believes the answer to that question will calm any fears that voters might harbor about his immigration stance.
“I end up being the strongest candidate on immigration, for the reason that I ran a city and made it real safe,” he concluded. “And I don’t see any opponent that I have who has ever done nearly as much about bringing down illegality as I have.”
Anyone who tries to tell me from now on that Rudy is not a liar - a flat-out, bald-faced liar - you will be refered to this link.
The “Stop Rudy” ping list!
E-mail/ping me if you want on/off the list! SPREAD THE WORD!!!
A liar? Surely not!
Rudy is probably referring to the first 400,000 who came to New Amsterdam in the New World, all with unregistered muskets.
Comprehensive List of Handguns *NOT* Outlawed by Mayor Rudy Giuliani
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1806614/posts
Okay, Rudy
Hunter built the darned fence.
And you think that McCain is the mentally unstable one...
Oh goody, another one of those Rooty, “I wanted to, coulda done, shoulda done, but I didn’t”, moments.
Priceless comedy!
I'll admit that his immigration stance is not an issue with me. I never get far enough to consider it. Guns and abortion are all the reason I need to never vote for this guy.
He slobbers all over the bar and the buffet----insults all the guests----craps all over the place---then won't go when he's asked to leave.
Rooty told MTP---he's gonna win all the primaries outside NH and Iowa. The only way he could win is with massive voter fraud.....and we should not put that past this grinning moron and his neopuke handlers.
Now THAT'S what I call a man with principles and BACKBONE!!! /s
“Rooty’s presence in the Repub party is like the uninvited guest at the black tie party wearing brown socks with black shoes and no anti-perspirant.”
LOL.
Rudy wears pink socks with his tux.
Giuliani doesn’t appear to have a conscience.
I guess his handlers haven't informed him yet of the Internet and all the amazing things one can find...
The Illegal-Alien Crime Wave
Heather Mac DonaldImmigration politics have similarly harmed New York. Former mayor Rudolph Giuliani sued all the way up to the Supreme Court to defend the city’s sanctuary policy against a 1996 federal law decreeing that cities could not prohibit their employees from cooperating with the INS. Oh yeah? said Giuliani; just watch me. The INS, he claimed, with what turned out to be grotesque irony, only aims to “terrorize people.” Though he lost in court, he remained defiant to the end....
New York conveniently forgot the 1996 federal ban on sanctuary laws until a gang of five Mexicans—four of them illegal—abducted and brutally raped a 42-year-old mother of two near some railroad tracks in Queens. The NYPD had already arrested three of the illegal aliens numerous times for such crimes as assault, attempted robbery, criminal trespass, illegal gun possession, and drug offenses. The department had never notified the INS.
So, ya wanna try again Rooty?
Like maybe after you get done explaining once more testifying before a Federal Grand Jury how it was legal for you to have your MISTRESS get NYPD Taxi Service and 24/7/365 protection, and also have them drive her girlfriends around to go shopping - all on the taxpayers dime.
And yes, Giuliani is a despicable, bald-faced liar, but what's even worse is that he thinks we're stupid enough to fall for his lies. Disgusting!
Marital fidelity, lying. Funny how it’s all related. Pubs need to pick someone with character.
He's the same old Rudy, except now he's getting very desperate.
The elitists in the party had promised Rudy that they could get him the nominaton and now he's discovering that they can't deliver.
He'll say anything right now to try to keep his campaign together.
Giuliani is down for the count. But the Huckster is on the rise, which leaves me feeling a lot like in ‘92 when Clinton got the nomination for the Dims.
I’m like, “Am I in an episode of The Twilight Zone?” This is insanity writ large.
He is. He's just not the only one.
Didn't Rudy in one of the early Republican debates admit to having said illegals who wanted to work in NYC were welcome when he was called on it?
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