Tom Ridge and His Amnesty Advocacy

by Joe Guzzardi
March 9, 2011

The early GOP list of possible 2012 presidential candidates includes familiar names like Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin. Whether one of those emerges from the pack or whether a relative unknown captures the nomination, one thing is sure. The nominee won’t invite Tom Ridge, the former Pennsylvania governor and first Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary, to join him on the campaign trail.

In an astonishingly arrogant speech at Georgetown University last week, Ridge ordered Americans who favor tighter immigration enforcement to “get over it,” to acknowledge that “we’re not sending 12 million people home” and to focus on a way to “legitimize their [illegal immigrants] status”. The March 1 Georgetown panel discussion which convened to recognize the eighth anniversary of the DHS included former and current DHS Secretaries Michael Chertoff and Janet Napolitano.

For Ridge to propose amnesty for illegal immigrants without at a minimum first securing America’s border shows a shocking disregard for the DHS’s main mission to keep the nation safe from foreign threats. As Ridge knows, the borders between the United States and Mexico are about more than just thwarting illegal aliens. During the two years that Ridge served as Secretary, thousands of “other than Mexicans” from countries unfriendly to the United States were detained when they attempted to enter.

Sadly, Ridge has a long history of being soft on border issues. In 2004 Ridge traveled to Nogales, where as part of his announcement that the U.S. would not “militarize its borders,” Ridge introduced two new, high-tech highway lanes to cut the port of entry waiting time for trucks coming from Mexico and Central America—as if terrorists could not hide inside them.

And, as Ridge also knows, the amnesty he’d love to see pass would only encourage more illegal immigration. Ridge served as a Congressional U.S. Representative during the Reagan administration and was on the scene, so to speak, during the disastrous 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. Then-INS Commissioner Doris Meissner admitted that “it was the commonly held view” within her agency that fraud was rife throughout the amnesty program. Worst of all, IRCA created more illegal immigration. Nearly 3 million illegal immigrants received green cards. Today, Ridge encourages amnesty and the work permits that go along with it for at least 12 million aliens.

Ridge, Napolitano and Chertoff have one thing in common: they all favor amnesty. But the difference among the three is that Chertoff is the only one who dedicated himself to enforcing immigration law. Perhaps Chertoff’s background as a criminal division prosecutor in the Justice Department or his efforts as a U.S. Attorney in the Mafia Commission trial reinforced his respect for upholding the law.

Whatever motivated him, Chertoff’s commitment to seeking out and deporting illegal aliens was the most widespread since the Eisenhower administration. During 2007, Chertoff’s last full year as Secretary, 30,407 arrests were made, nearly double the number from 2006. Included were hundreds of business owners, managers and human resources administrators accused of knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.

Chertoff’s arrests opened up hundreds of employment opportunities for Americans to do the work they supposedly would not. To avoid future confrontations with ICE, some companies ran their new employees through E-Verify.

Now a private citizen, Ridge is on the after dinner speech circuit and can say what he pleases without fearing political repercussions. Maybe Ridge missed the 2010 Congressional election results that put five new Republican Senators and 63 new House representatives into office because of their strong stand in favor of immigration law enforcement.

If you ask me, Ridge’s Georgetown comments smack of sour grapes.

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Joe Guzzardi has written editorial columns—mostly about immigration and related social issues – since 1990. He is a senior writing fellow for Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) and his columns have frequently been syndicated in various U.S. newspapers and websites. He can be reached at [email protected].