Romney’s Lawn Care History and the Fight Over Immigration (NYT fact checks GOP debate)

[alp227]

Rick Perry’s most pointed attack against Mitt Romney in Tuesday night’s debate concerned an immigration matter that came to light when Mr. Romney was campaigning for president four years ago.

“You hired illegals in your home,” said Mr. Perry, the governor of Texas, “and you knew for — about it for a year.” For Mr. Romney to say he was tough on illegal immigration was “the height of hypocrisy,” Mr. Perry said.

While it is not clear that Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, ever knew directly that his landscaping company was using illegal immigrants to tend his lawn, the episode was embarrassing for him in 2007 when it happened, and it is awkward now.

The Boston Globe first reported in December 2006 that Mr. Romney was employing a lawn care company that regularly hired illegal immigrants. He said he had dismissed an illegal immigrant he discovered working on his property. But he continued to use the same lawn company, and a year later The Globe reported that the company had once again employed illegal immigrants for lawn care. The day of the second Globe report, Mr. Romney fired the company.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/19/us/politics/illegal-immigration-and-romneys-lawn-care-debated.html

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Here in Bergen County, esp. in the "affluent" towns, I'd give $1,000 to any landscaping

company that doesn't have "illegal aliens" working for them.

[yellowcanine]

2. I am no fan of Mitt's but this is a bum rap. How would one know that a landscaping company they

hired had undocumented people working for them? Because they spoke Spanish? Profile much, Ricky?

[thelordofhell]

3. I guess Perry does his own lawn

You cannot hire a non illegal alien using lawn company in Texas