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Stephen Bailey – A Man With a Plan (On Immigration)

by | 7:08 am, October 4, 2010 | 2 Comments

Last night, I interviewed Stephen Bailey, who is running for Congressional Office in CO-2 against Jared Polis.  Our discussion touched on many topics, but while I try to figure out how to upload audio to the internet the only one I’ll be able to focus on is immigration.

On immigration, Stephen Bailey is the first Republican Candidate I’ve had the chance to interview that “gets it.”   His main point on immigration is that immigration should be determined based on a two part test – is the immigrant a security threat and will they be a burden on society?  Additionally, Stephen Bailey clearly is against having the government set “arbitrary quotas” on the number of immigrants – it should be the market, not a government bureaucrat that decides the amount of immigrants get to live and work in this Country. This position stands in sharp contrast to those who contend that  it is somehow in line with conservative principles to allow a bureaucrat to end all immigration so as to protect jobs.

This stand does not mean that Stephen Bailey wants anybody to comes in to get citizenship.  His dual-requirement test (not a security threat and not a burden), only is to apply for residency in the United States.  Citizenship for him is more complicated and we didn’t fully get into the additional requirements that Stephen Bailey would like to have for naturalization.  We did touch on birthright citizenship, where Stephen Bailey is in favor of taking a second a look at birthright citizenship.  He specifically stated that a child “should inherit the best status of either one of its biological parents. . . . so long as we have a welfare state.”  Because the 14th amd. would potentially be in the way, Stephen Bailey would be in favor of voting for a “clarification of the 14th Amd.” and seeing if that “would uphold in federal court.”  Interestingly, he would also want to explore whether Congress could strip jurisdiction from the federal courts to hear if this proposed clarification was constitutional.

We next touched upon Local Control.  I querried whether Stephen Bailey would support a broader delegation of federal authority to the Cities/States over immigration matters.  Stephen Baily steadfastly maintained that whether somebody is a security threat should remain a nondelegated federal issue, however he felt that the question of whether somebody is a public burden could be handled (and maybe should be handled) by the Cities/States.   On the question of whether the Feds should give Cities/States the power to tax immigrants at different rates than citizens, Stephen Bailey is in favor of allowing lower taxation of said immigrants (because they wouldn’t receive any benefits in his view) – he was hostile to the viewpoint that cities/states should be allowed to tax such immigrants at a higher rate “going the wrong way, because that is not establishing the principle we want to establish, that you are coming here to live an independent life.”  However, he seemed to accept the idea that the federal government would at least give the authority to states/localities to make the mistake of setting higher rates on immigrants than the rest of the populace.  Why a mistake – partly because the argument that immigrants are a “burden on the rest of society [is] an assertion, never proven.”

Finally, we touched on the issue of the 3/1o year bar, which I have written about elsewhere.  Stephen Bailey indicated that on the limited amount he knew about it, that it was an area of immigration law that is in need of reformation.

All in all it was an interesting discussion.  I don’t agree with Stephen Bailey on every aspect of his immigration ideas, but he was quite thoughtful and seemed to deal with questions that he had never thought about before by looking back at his principles, which are strongly free market.  I think Colorado would be fortunate to have such a man in office, and urge anybody in his area to look into helping out with his campaign.

Provisos

1) This post was a bit rushed as I have to get to work – forgive the typos

2) I’ll try to get the other part of the interview up later today or this week

3) I’m new to uploading audio files, so if this post is heavily linked, we may exceed the bandwith allowed for the month and the audio would become inaccessible.  Not sure if that will happen.

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Comments

  1.   Stephen Bailey
      October 4th, 2010 @ 12:06 pm

    Elliot, thank you for the interview.

    A clarification on whether immigrants are a burden and taxing immigrants. If they are ineligible for government services and must pay their own way, then they cannot be a burden.

    Currently, immigrants are eligible for government services and a case could be made that an immigrant is a burden. However, you would need to prove it on an individual basis because we don’t punish everyone in some identifiable group of people just because one person is guilty of something. We are all individuals. The best solution is to require immigrants to lead independent lives which means paying for services they use.

  2.   Mrs. Chambers
      October 5th, 2010 @ 1:40 pm

    Thanks for posting this. I am happy to hear someone speak common sense on immigration. We should be encouraging immigration– to get the best individuals from all around the world. We’re all here as result of immigrants who wanted to make a better life for themselves and others ought to have the opportunity.
    Cheers-

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