Tim Kaine’s speech tonight will try to paint a different picture from the Wall Street donors and corruption that have dominated the Clinton campaign.
I have gotten to know Tim Kaine well over the years, and have nothing bad to say about him personally. However, as working class voters learn about his record, especially on the key issue of illegal immigration, they’ll see that he is completely at odds with the groups that the Hillary Clinton campaign hopes he will appeal to.
When Kaine first ran for governor in 2005, illegal immigration was a hot topic in Virginia. Governor Mark Warner vetoed a bill barring in-state tuition to illegal aliens, and the town of Herndon created a taxpayer-funded day-labor center for illegal aliens.
Kaine’s opponent Jerry Kilgore criticized him supporting the day labor centers and in-state tuition. The Kaine campaign denied he supported day labor centers, arguing he merely “respects the right of local government [in Herndon] to deal with the … challenge in the way they see fit.”
Two years into Kaine’s term, he changed his tune.
In 2007, I led Prince William County to adopt the 287g program, which enables local and state law enforcement officials to identify and initiate the deportation of illegal aliens who commit crimes. Instead of “respecting the right of local government,” Kaine opposed the policy saying that local law enforcement should not assist in removing illegal alien criminals because it would create a “patchwork of a million different sets of regulations,” even though 287g is a federal program. He also fought to stop the Virginia state police from joining the program.
As U.S. Senator, Tim Kaine promoted amnesty by recounting, in Spanish, a sob story of an illegal alien who attended college in Virginia. Kaine also attended multiple “DAPA Dinners” with other illegal aliens and spoke out for their interests.
I have no doubt that some of these “DREAMers” are nice people who are in a tough position. However, I blame their parents for breaking the law, not America for having laws in the first place. And ignoring the law has inflicted more serious consequences on Americans than having to pay out-of-state tuition rates.
For example, take the tragic death of Sister Denise Mosier who was killed by illegal alien Carlos Montano.
Montano was twice arrested for drunk driving in Prince William and handed over to ICE for deportation in 2008. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to us, ICE set Montano loose on his own recognizance. On Aug. 1, 2010, he struck a car carrying Sister Denise Mosier, killing her and seriously injured two other nuns.
Had our immigration laws been enforced, Sister Mosier would be alive today, as would thousands of other American citizens killed by illegal aliens. But like Hillary Clinton, Tim Kaine will do nothing to prevent the killings of Americans like Sister Denise. Kaine even voted against the Stop Dangerous Sanctuary Cities Act, which would have stopped cities from setting free violent illegal alien criminals like seven-time-convicted felon Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez whom Sanctuary City San Francisco set free just months before he murdered Kate Steinle.
As Donald Trump said at his acceptance speech, the families of Americans killed by illegal aliens “have no special interests to represent them. There are no demonstrators to protect them and certainly none to protest on their behalf.” Tim Kaine meets with sympathetic illegal aliens, but not with the families of Americans who have been killed.
He often speaks about his Catholic missionary experience in Honduras during law school and how that affected his views on immigration. I commend him for this service. However, there’s a huge difference between using your own time and money to help the world’s poor in their own countries, and using your power to shelter them in your country—2.1 million of whom are known criminals–while leaving your fellow citizens responsible for the costs and consequences.
By choosing Tim Kaine as her running mate, Hillary Clinton has doubled down on her disastrous amnesty policy that puts illegal aliens first and Americans last.