Fred Thompson Raps ‘Open Border’ Immigration
Sphere: Related Content
(Newsmax) Fred Thompson, a potential Republican presidential candidate, suggested that the 1986 immigration law signed by President Reagan is to blame for the country’s illegal immigrants and he bemoaned a nation beset by “suicidal maniacs.”
“Twelve million illegal immigrants later, we are now living in a nation that is beset by people who are suicidal maniacs and want to kill countless innocent men, women and children around the world,” the former Tennessee senator said. “We’re sitting here now with essentially open borders.”
He made the comments Thursday night as he discussed the 1986 immigration reform bill and the Senate’s current legislation to overhaul the immigration system during a speech to people attending the annual Prescott Bush Awards Dinner in Stamford, Conn.
Thompson, the actor on NBC’s popular drama “Law & Order,” is widely expected to enter the GOP presidential race this summer. His backers bill him as a conservative in the mold of Ronald Reagan who can beat the Democratic nominee in November 2008.
That’s the same Reagan who signed an immigration overhaul two decades ago that gave amnesty to an estimated 2.7 million illegal immigrants who had been in the United States at least four years.
“Future generations of Americans will be thankful for our efforts to humanely regain control of our borders and thereby preserve the value of one of the most sacred possessions of our people: American citizenship,” Reagan said in a statement on Nov. 6, 1986, as the bill became law with his signature.
Immigration has dominated the Republican presidential race this week, with candidates seeking to navigate the tricky politics of the Senate measure that many conservatives oppose. They make up a large part of the GOP base whose votes are critical in the Republican primary contests.
Thompson, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani all oppose the measure to varying degrees, even though all three have made statements in the past in which they appeared to support a similar measure the Senate previously considered.
Sen. John McCain of Arizona is a co-sponsor of the new measure that would meld tougher policies to secure the country’s porous borders with a guest-worker program and an eventual path to citizenship for most of the 12 million immigrants in the country illegally.
![[Valid RSS]](http://politicalpartypoop.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed")