June 6, 2006
Immigration advocates that have recently been lobbying Tennessee’s U.S. senators had better turn their full attention to Tennessee’s members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Of Tennessee’s nine elected Representatives (four Republican, five Democrat), all but one–Jim Cooper of Nashville–voted for H.R.4437, the immigration enforcement-only bill. Worse yet, four of the nine (John Duncan, William Jenkins, Zach Wamp, and Lincoln Davis) are members of the Immigration Reform Caucus, according to that group’s website. The Immigration Reform Caucus, founded by restrictionist Tom Tancredo (Colorado), is a group of congressmen who share similar opinions on immigration issues. It espouses policy positions such as construction of a wall across the entire southern border, elimination of birth-right citizenship, criminalization of immigration violators as felons, a moratorium on almost all legal immigration, etc. Knoxville’s John Duncan gave voice to several of the group’s ideas in his March 31, 2006, “E-Newsletter,” including these:
- “I do not believe the Country needs a guest worker program. There are plenty of people in the Country legally who could perform many of the jobs currently given to illegal aliens.”
- “We must have immigration laws and they must be enforced or this nation will slowly but surely take on many of the characteristics of a third world country.”
- “[T]he House has already acted on a border security bill [H.R.4437]. Although I believe we could have gone further, this bill is a step in the right direction.”
