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Tancredo – Lying at the Liberty on The Rocks Denver?

by | 6:58 am, August 5, 2010 | 9 Comments

Last night, Tom Tancredo spoke at Liberty on The Rock – Denver.  While there, he was confronted with the question – how can you call yourself a defender of liberty and free market capitalism when you have defended ending LEGAL immigration for three years using (a) raising peoples wages; and (b) protecting people’s access to jobs as justifications?

Tom’s response was that he never used either of those as a justification for restricting legal immigration.  He was very specific and very pointed in his denial.

He almost certainly lied.

For proof see here:  Look no farther than the title of the Op-Ed that Tancredo personally wrote: “Ultimate jobs program: Immigration timeout.”  Look also here, for audio of Tancredo guest-hosting a radio show and repeatedly calling for restrictions on legal immigration to protect jobs and raise wages (if you don’t want to listen to the whole audio, the relevant portions are all cited in this post).

Why is this a big deal?  Because Tom is pitching himself as a principled defender of liberty and capitalism who one should vote for despite his party affiliation.  However, waiving the words “Party over Principle” is not a talisman – there are requirements (as detailed in this link).  Specifically, if you are going to call yourself a principled conservative who defends liberty and capitalism, then one such requirement is not to advocate government regulation to protect wages and jobs.  Tom knows or should know this, knows he has blatantly contradicted this precept, and thus apparently chose to lie about it in order to avoid a tough question (see important proviso below).  How is that an example of integrity and character?  How is that not simply politics as usual?

Those are the tough questions that Tom Tancredo should be called on to answer.

Proviso – Why do I say almost certainly and not just call out Tancredo as a liar?  Two reasons:

(1) It is possible that I (and everybody I spoke with afterwards) misinterpreted his words.  This strikes me as highly unlikely given the specificity of Tom’s answer, but until PPC posts the video, I want to point this issue out.
(2) Tom may have forgotten he ever advocated for restricting legal immigration on the basis of jobs and wages, meaning this wasn’t an intentional lie, just a misstatement.  Once again, this would be highly unlikely as Tom has repeated his justification multiple times, including just this past month on the radio.

UPDATE:  Video is out and it confirms my recollection.  See analysis here.

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Comments

  1.   Donald E. L. Johnson
      August 5th, 2010 @ 8:31 am

    This is a phony issue. Only extremist libertarians who pretend to favor free markets make it. They defend the distortion of markets by illegal immigrants and by legal immigrants who get into the country under laws sponsored by high tech companies that hire legal immigrants who will work for less than Americans who can do the same jobs.

    This is a case where libertarians show their ignorance of markets and economics. They tout “free markets” as if there are such things. They demand unregulated markets, which are always distorted by large players and scam artists. There are no truly free markets because every market is controlled one way or another by the laws of regulations of one or more countries.

    In the case of immigration, illegal immigrants and the greedy employers, including many home owners, who exploit them are distorting our labor markets. This is denying jobs to our less educated and educable citizens. It’s depressing wages for most Americans but especially the less educated ones.

    Illegal immigration and and even some legal education also are also distorting our health insurance, health care and education markets as well as our housing and many other markets.

    It is time to suspend immigration. We no longer need immigrants to grow our country. We have an effective unemployment rate of about 20%. We can’t afford to supply medical, education and welfare services to immigrants of any kind.

    And the argument that this is a country of immigrants is misleading. Yes, every country in the world is populated by people whose ancestors migrated from elsewhere decades and centuries ago. All countries are countries of immigrants. And at some point, which we’ve reached, every country has to get smart and take care of its citizens first. Every country eventually has to get smart and slow immigration or even almost stop it.

    Tom Tancredo has been a leader in fighting illegal immigration and the immoral exploitation of illegal immigrants and low-paid citizens. He’s becoming the leader of the anti-immigration movement, which I have decided to support.

  2.   Chuck Moe
      August 5th, 2010 @ 10:02 am

    While I’m quite sure that Elliot can counter Don’s arguments quite easily, I feel compelled to address Don’s reply as it contains quite a few problems and distortions.

    Don: Most “extremist libertarians” don’t just pretend but actually do favor free markets. While there may not be a perfectly free market there is an ideal of as little government intervention as possible.

    Immigrants, both legal and illegal do NOT distort the free market. They are in fact, players in the free market. An employer choosing to make a private employment contract with an individual who is also freely choosing to abide with said contract without any government intervention is about as free as it gets. Having the government tell private employers who they can hire and who they can’t isn’t a free market principle. The key word here is free – meaning free of government intervention.

    As far as greedy employers exploiting illegal immigrants…please. When an illegal immigrant works for a U.S. employer, he/she is voluntarily making a decision to choose to come here and contract with an employer. Nobody is putting a gun to their head or forcing them to work.

    Suspending immigration would more damage to our economy than most realize. Not only would consumer prices on many goods increase dramatically, but we would lose intellectual capital. The amount of immigrants who work in research and industry is astounding and the impact of losing that capital would be felt throughout the U.S. I work with many scientists across the U.S. and a good amount of the research is done by immigrants. Why are there so many immigrates in the hi-tech industries? Because many of them are the most qualified candidates for the job….period. To have government restrict those qualified people from employment in the U.S. would be as far from a free market philosophy as one could get.

    “They took our jobs” has to be one of the biggest fallacies of the immigration debate ever heard.

  3.   Mike Niland
      August 5th, 2010 @ 11:11 am

    I am sick of the concept of a “job” and the government’s fervent defense of that concept. This is America; everyone is expected to use their freedom of enterprise.

    Jobs lead to exploitation – internships and top-heavy pay structures.

    Services should be offered on a contract basis. Corporations should be partnerships or publicly-traded entities.

    Ownership, not employment, should be the cornerstone of American prosperity.

  4.   Mike Niland
      August 5th, 2010 @ 11:18 am

    In other words, you own your labor, and it’s not a commodity for Microsoft and IBM to buy and sell.

    The government likes keeping you under an onerous employment contract. It’s easy to tax a big corporate paycheck. If Ken has five apples and Jane has five dollars, and Jane gives Ken five dollars for five apples, Uncle Sam probably isn’t going to see a cut.

    The bills say they’re good for private debts, too.

  5.   Brian Wilson
      August 5th, 2010 @ 11:32 am

    In that case, I support free markets within the U.S. I do not support this sort of “one world” free market. Immigration must be controlled, or immigrants will not have time to adjust and assimilate into society, and instead tear it apart. But as far as Tancredo, honesty was never his strong suit (term limits, third parties, etc.).

  6.   Mike Shelton
      August 5th, 2010 @ 11:37 am

    So let me get this right, Donald:
    Free markets are an extremist myth and more regulation would rid markets of scam artists, monopolies and, I presume you mean to suggest that more regulation would also be an effective counter to greed? This could only be true in the same sense that Marx and Trotsky thought it could be true: that is, for these central plans to be effective, it presumes that there is “collectivist thought” similar to the dystopia that we see in 1984 or THX1138.
    This limited scope of thought ignores basic ideas of humanity that we have known for thousands of years: namely individualism and human nature, a part of which is our motivation to compete and create, but any system that is contrary to Individual Freedom and Liberty must presuppose that leaders are benevolent beings, and better or more wise than their subjects. Moreover, they rely on a theoretical hierarchy of ultra-wise economists who are able to adjust all mechanisms of the market to accomplish a collectivist “greater good”. But as these controls are by their very nature reactionary, and humans are by their primitive nature self-interested (or “greedy” as you call it), and we know that power corrupts, any suggestion that they would be effective and palatable is utterly false and dehumanistic.

    There is no better understanding of markets than Libertarians’. Free markets do indeed exist, and undoubtedly they will always exist. Wherever Government involves itself in markets, be it regulation, wage controls or outright bans, the products effected will always be sought after and sold, but they are given the name “black markets”. This is human nature, and cannot be disputed.

    To conjure xenophobic fear about the participants in a market is very short-sighted, and is dangerous because it distracts from the better argument that markets are better left unfettered because demand and supply for goods and services, along with interest rates, send coordinating signals across all sectors of a macro-economy at the same time they do in a micro-economy, and these signals are very, very important to the growth, efficiency and sustainability of the market. Make no mistake: We are in this position because we have had 100 years of the Federal Reserve and other Government/Corporatist interference and manipulation of markets, not because we haven’t had enough of them.

    Similar to economics, the focus of immigration reform should be on de-centralization, and implementing a system where the incentives are congruent with inevitable human action, which is easy to predict, and which Elliot has begun to do in his white paper.

  7.   Mike Shelton
      August 5th, 2010 @ 11:57 am

    I agree, Brian – as our current National economy is undoubtedly teetering on the ever-swinging levels of confidence that politicians and Wall Street are able to conjure up with monetary policy and legislative loopholes, an open border policy would make things worse – but that is not an endorsement of closing it off – there are many other wrongs that need to be righted before we close ourselves off and hoard our few-remaining freedoms.

    We should not blame the immigrants for doing what humans always do – trying to better themselves and raise their standards of living, and creating a better situation for their children; but we should expect that immigrants learn about the responsibilities that come with freedom, lest they seek to use government power to take freedoms from others. And we should expect that language barriers are broken down so that there is more participation, more interaction, more understanding, and ultimately, more peace.

    It would be better for States to have some say in who they bring in, and on what conditions, but there is much work to be done before a better system would be popular and workable.

  8.   Liberty Ink Journal
      August 5th, 2010 @ 3:41 pm

    [...] He supports implementing a moritorium on LEGAL immigration to allow Americans the right to a job and high wages (which in no way aligns with free enterprise, one of the Tea Party’s core principles): http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=123528 and then denied it: http://www.peoplespresscollective.org/2010/08/tancredo-lying-at-the-liberty-on-the-rocks-denver/ [...]

  9.   Peoples Press Collective | Colorado Politics | Video and Audio Proof – Tancredo Lied (or is just EXTREMELY forgetful) :
      August 5th, 2010 @ 6:20 pm

    [...] today, I posted a report from last night’s Liberty on the Rocks -Denver that at a speech where he repeatedly advocated [...]

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