Republican gubernatorial hopeful Chris Dudley thinks Oregon should consider adopting a draconian anti-immigration law like Arizona’s – or at least that’s what he seemed to be saying when he appeared on the Lars Larson show the other day.
According to a transcript posted by Kari Chisholm on the Blue Oregon site, Larson asked Dudley whether “when the cops run into somebody that they think that they have reasonable suspicion to believe is illegal, should they … find out whether the person is [illegal] or not – and then take them into custody or not?”
Dudley’s response: “If they have reasonable suspicion, and I think that is probably the key word here, is, uh, then I think they should be able to, to look into that – um – and I, and that’s, uh – it’ll be int … – obviously the courts are gonna take a look at how the Arizona law has been written. I – uh - have looked at it, but the courts will decide whether it’s, uh, constitutionally, uh, um, uh, whether it works in that regard, and if it does I think it’s, uh - it’s something that we could look at … ”
You can listen to the audio here.
Another aspirant for the Republican nomination, former state legislator John Lim, says he’s in favor of Oregon adopting the Arizona law. But Dudley’s chief rival, businessman Allen Alley, has said he opposes it – despite which he’s been endorsed by Oregonians for Immigration Reform, largely because he supports the “E-Verify” program to make employers screen their workforces for illegal immigrants.
OIR had harsh words for Dudley, charging that he “clearly supports continuing the tradition of turning a blind eye to the issue. If you scrutinize his major contributors, it is not hard to understand why he takes that stand. Dudley has, on numerous occasions, expressed support for businesses that rely on illegal workers. Dudley has no clear strategy of how or even why he should discuss the issue of illegal immigration.”
Speaking for myself, I wouldn’t have any problem with Oregon giving police the power to stop people they “reasonably suspect” of being illegal immigrants, as long as they do a thorough job.
After all, it’s not just Hispanic-looking people who might be illegal immigrants. White-skinned, blue-eyed blond people could have come here illegally from Sweden – or Germany or Russia or England or Canada, to name just a few places. And people who look Asian might be illegal immigrants from China, South Korea or Japan.
What the hell, the only way to be sure we round up all the illegals is to have the cops stop everybody they see, make them produce their papers and do a strip search.
