Ask Carly: Immigration

Karen Dickerson, Huntington Beach, California asks:

I was really pulling for you and thought you would be a good opponent against Hillary, but then you went and disparaged Trump’s comments about illegal aliens, when in fact it’s the truth, just about everyone in America knows……so please and in as much detail as you can explain your stance on immigration, especially illegal immigration. As of now I’ve switched my vote to Trump, unless you can convince me you have America’s interest at heart.

Carly Fiorina:

Well what a great question, Karen. First of all, our borders have been insecure for 25 years. So of course Americans are angry. We’ve had sanctuary cities for 15 years. We haven’t had an employer verification system that works for decades, our legal immigration system has been broken for decades, we don’t know who comes into the country, we don’t know who leaves the country.

Americans are really angry. I’m angry because the professional political class, frankly of both parties, talks about this when they need to get the heat off, but they don’t ever do anything about it. So here’s what I would do.

I would enforce federal laws in every city, including sanctuary cities. I would secure the border; it isn’t rocket science to secure the border. It takes money, it takes manpower, it takes technology, but mostly, apparently, it takes political willpower and leadership. So let’s secure the border and end sanctuary cities.

I would fix the legal immigration system. We have at least16 different visa programs, half the people who are here illegally came on a legal visa and just overstayed. We hand out thousands of border crossing cards that are supposed to be good for a day but then it turns out they’re good for years. We let the wrong people in, we send the wrong people home, and then finally, of course, we need to deal with those people have come here illegally and stayed here illegally. And what I’ve said for a very long time is they do not earn a pathway to citizenship, because people who have played by the rules, and studied our history, and taken the oath, they have to be rewarded for understanding what the responsibility of citizenship means.