John Kline’s Non-Existent Immigration Policy

John Kline is resorting to more scare tactics in the 2nd. (Remember his attack on Rowley’s unpaid volunteer? Actually, he’s still at that too.)  This time he’s trying to convince voters that Coleen Rowley wants to establish a revolving door immigration policy (see the scary door on the right; that’s the flier!).  Although the flier is full of outright lies (for a full debunking of the flier, click here), it did get me interested in the immigration policies of each candidate.  So, I put together a summary for your reference below the fold.  (Seriously, Kline’s lack of actual  immigration policy is astounding; you want to see this.)Coleen Rowley’s immigration policy (derived from this list):

• Secure the borders: Rowley was a FBI agent for 24 years and knows that securing our borders through increased border patrol is an essential part of national security.
• Enhanced visa program: pretty straight forward; visa programs are a good way to regulate the entrance and exit of foreign workers.
• Earned Citizenship:  this is really the staple of Rowley’s immigration policy.  It’s been elaborated upon in numerous debates and speeches, but it basically boils down to the following common-sense terms: have a job for 6 years, pay $2K and all back taxes, learn English and US civics, and pass a national security background check.
• Enforce the above: again, straight forward, but Rowley emphasizes employment side enforcement as well as individual enforcement.

John Kline’s immigration policy is a little bit more difficult to decipher.  His campaign site has no way to access any sort of policy papers and a google search of the site for “immigration” yields zero results.

His Congressional site isn’t very helpful either.  A google search of that site yields only 4 results.  Now, get this, one of the references is to bolster claims that anti-terrorist laws have been successful and has nothing to do with immigration policy; one of the references is a link to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on a page that lists Federal Government services; one of the references is found in the list of topics available on John Kline’s contact form; and finally, the only substantive references are found on a page that lists legislation that Kline has co-sponsered.  So, no joke here, John Kline’s sum total of pages on both his Congressional and Campaign sites that reference immigration policy is 1.

But you take what you can get, so let’s try to construct John Kline’s policy from these co-sponsored bills:

• H.R.698:  “To amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to deny citizenship at birth to children born in the United States of parents who are not citizens or permanent resident aliens.”  This bill means that there are some people who are born in America that are not citizens.

That’s it… the list has two more bills but one has to due with appropriate ID for federal agencies to accept and one to revise certain requirements for H-2B employees.

That’s right, people, the entirety of John Kline’s immigration policy that can be found in his online materials is one co-sponsered House bill.  I would think that formulating your own immigration policy before attacking your opponent’s would be a pretty important first step but, then again, John Kline is just full of surprises.