Our own Executive Director here at America’s Voice, Frank Sharry, debated Laura Ingraham on Fox News last night, and made the case for why Republicans–including Ingraham, a hard-right-winger–should support immigration reform. As Frank said:
Laura, the guts of this bill is the most massive expansion of immigration enforcement in American history. It’s a doubling of the Border Patrol. A doubling of border fencing. A mandatory E-Verify system and entry/exit system. It should be something you should be celebrating as the government finally getting serious about something I believe they have been serious about for the last 20 years. But this is designed to get Republican support on a bill that also modernizes our legal immigration system and creates path to citizenship. What’s not to like?
In some ways, Frank pointed out, what conservatives get out of the bill is an even better deal than what immigration reform advocates get. “We don’t get our path to citizenship for 11 million people unless you double the Border Patrol and have 38,000 agents in place,” he said. “It’s a hard trigger called 38,000 Border Patrol officers.”
Ingraham asked him what would happen in a hypothetical in which a future Democratic president promised in a primary to shorten the pathway to citizenship from the 13-year road that is in the current Senate bill. Frank responded that he didn’t know for sure what would happen in that scenario, and in response proposed a different hypothetical.
“Let’s say Laura Ingraham gets what she wants and the bill craters and the House stops it,” he said. “[Primary candidate Hillary] Clinton’s going to say ‘I’m going to win 85% of the Latino vote because Laura Ingraham got her way.”
