June 10, 2006
An article in Nashville’s City Paper described yesterday how Tennessee’s U.S. Senate candidates are playing politics with the immigration debate. In their latest effort to “out-right” each other, Republican candidates Ed Bryant and Van Hilleary have been joined by Democrat Harold Ford in accusing Republican Bob Corker’s former construction firm Bencor of hiring undocumented workers in the late 1980s. Corker has denied any wrongdoing and characterized the incident as one in which the “INS reported that Bencor bent over backwards to make sure that the subcontractors were complying with all rules and regulations.” Tennessee’s Senate candidates would apparently rather bicker about what did and did not happen at a particular construction site twenty years ago rather than debate solutions to the immigration issues faced by construction companies in the present.
