A Border War
Tom Tancredo is pulling the immigration debate to the right—and away from Bush.
By Holly Bailey
Newsweek
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12017855/site/newsweek/
April 3, 2006 issue - The lights were on, the cameras were rolling, but the special guest star was nowhere to be found. Last Friday afternoon, 55 men and women from 30 countries sat in a Denver conference room, clutching small American flags as they waited to be sworn in as U.S. citizens. The 12:15 starting time had come and gone, and some people were getting impatient. "For heaven's sake," one woman said, sighing. "What is the holdup?" A few minutes later, they had the answer. Tom Tancredo, the Republican congressman, was coming to welcome the new citizens. He was hard to miss when he breezed in, 25 minutes late, dressed in a dark suit and an American-flag necktie. Even so, few in the room recognized him until one man whispered, "He's the guy who sits on the border chasing illegals."
Tancredo may not be a household name yet, but he's doing everything he can to change that. As the House and Senate debate the nation's immigration and border-security laws, the four-term Coloradan has positioned himself as the loudest, angriest voice against the estimated 11 million illegal aliens now living in the United States. They are "a scourge that threatens the very future of our nation," he says. He laments "the cult of multiculturalism," and worries about America's becoming a "Tower of Babel." If Republican presidential candidates don't put the problem atop the agenda in 2008, he says he'll run himself, just to force the front runners to talk about it. Not that he thinks he'd win the White House. He declares himself "too fat, too short and too bald" to be president. If the Republicans lose the election because he's too tough on the issue, he says, "So be it."
Not so long ago, Tancredo was regarded as little more than a noisy pest on Capitol Hill. His colleagues shook their heads at his tireless demands for crackdowns on American employers who hire illegals and his idea for a 700-mile-long fence along the Mexican border. But in recent months, some of those same Republicans have come to realize that, while Tancredo may be a crank, he is a crank with a large and passionate following. Anti-immigration sentiment has always simmered, and it flares up about once a decade—the last time it hit this level was 1996, when California Gov. Pete Wilson made it the centerpiece of his failed presidential campaign. Tancredo was one of the first politicians to tap into the latest surge of anger. In states with large numbers of undocumented workers, voters complain that poor illegals are overwhelming public schools, clogging hospital emergency rooms and bankrupting welfare budgets. And they worry that inadequate border security makes it easy for would-be terrorists to sneak into the country. Tancredo's colleagues are listening. When he arrived in Washington, he started the Immigration Reform Caucus. The group attracted just 16 members. Today, there are 91.
Tancredo's anti-immigration campaign is also brazenly, almost gleefully, taking aim at George W. Bush and Karl Rove. The president had once hoped the immigration debate would center on his proposed guest-worker program, which would allow illegals—who fill millions of unskilled, low-wage jobs—to stay in the country for a set period of time. This was Bush the pragmatist, the former border-state governor who wanted to acknowledge the importance of immigrant labor to construction, fruit farming and other chunks of the U.S. economy. "He doesn't think it's morally right that a group that has been critical to the strength of the economy is operating in the shadows," says a senior Bush aide who, following policy, spoke anonymously. Meanwhile, Rove pushed the pure political benefits of the plan: immigrant-friendly policies would help the party reach out to the fast-growing Latino vote.
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