Four candidates have responded to the questionnaire issued by nativist/extremist group Help Save Maryland: Democrat Thomas Hardman, Republicans Robin Ficker, Lou August and Andrew Padula and Green Party member George Gluck. Here are the candidates’ statements from their completed forms.
Thomas Hardman, Democrat
I’m sick of special interest groups promoting the invasion of our sovereign nation and subversion of the rule of law. I’m sick of pandering politicians that will cave at the slightest whisper from the lawyers and Unregistered Agents of Foreign Powers that work endlessly to undermine the legacy of our Founding Fathers. I welcome and will assist every decent person who waits patiently for their turn to legally and reasonably come to the USA to become American. But for lawbreakers, I give NOTHING but endless opposition and my most vituperative expressions of OUTRAGE.
Lou August, Republican
Many of our schools have large populations of children from families of illegal immigrants. My wife is a substitute teacher in MCPS and she frequently recounts the significant behavioral issues of children she works with, many from children she suspects are illegal immigrants. Almost by definition, many of these families come from turbulent distressed backgrounds, which often has a negative impact on their children’s behavior. The result of this is a damaged learning environment for all students, even those here legally whose parents’ tax dollars support the entire system – all during a time when education is more important than ever. If we address illegal immigration issues earlier, these very significant consequential impacts will be reduced or eliminated.
The later in the “consequence chain” we address illegal immigration, the greater the humanitarian impact on the immigrant and community when enforcement is finally enacted. Our first steps need to be reducing the attractiveness of Montgomery County to illegal immigrants through methods such as enforcing E-Verify, requiring proof of legal residency to get a drivers license, and a timeline for ratcheted-down customs enforcement by county police.
Robin Ficker, Republican
We need to enforce the single-family zoning laws to protect homeowners.
Andrew Padula, Republican
There are hundreds of millions of people living in abject poverty in this hemisphere. Unfortunately we cannot offer refuge to all or even a significant part of this population without risking the very fabric of our nation. We are robbing developing nations of the core of their workforce this leaving in their void nations populated by women, children, the elderly, and infirm, who are ill equipped to fend for themselves.
There is a direct inverse proportional relationship to the rise in Mexican and Central American cartel violence and our acceptance of an ever increasing population of illegal immigrants. In itself, our misplaced intentions of kindness are in fact supporting the tragedy of human rights abuses on a mass scale. When the concept of slavery is re-introduced into our free nation through indentured servitude and sex slavery, there is a big problem afoot.
The acceptance of “illegal immigrants” also sets up a two-tiered societal structure that opposes the even handed rule of law. More importantly however is the fact that the utilization of this underground workforce inhibits the natural flow of economic development by unduly influencing the marketplace for both wages and the prices of goods. I believe that it would be a far better course of action to encourage these individuals to return to their home countries and to rebuild them from within rather than to risk a societal upheaval in the United States that may very well preclude us from ever being able to genuinely assist any more developing nations in the future.
George Gluck, Green Party
I believe that we do not so much have an “illegal immigrant” problem as much as we do an “illegal employer” problem. Enforcing existing laws which hold employers culpable for hiring illegal immigrants will result in a much lower demand for illegal workers. From a recent NPR broadcast about the present dearth of day labor openings: The other day I told my wife on the phone, “If I can just get a plane ticket – however I can find the money for that – I’m coming back to El Salvador.”