December 01, 2007
Max Blumenthal offers "Tom Tancredo Hired Illegal Laborers to Renovate His McMansion" (alternet.org/story/69391). It's so full of misleading statements and lies it's difficult to know where to begin. However, the title itself contains a lie: Tancredo contracted with Creative Drywall Design of Denver; he didn't hire illegal aliens directly as the title states, the president of that company claims he thought they were legal workers, and lawyers advised of the case stated he didn't break any laws [1].
Then, we move on to the subhead:
Anti-immigration zealot and GOP presidential candidate Tom Tancredo hired what he often refers to as "criminal aliens" to renovate his Colorado house.
There's a difference between illegal aliens and criminal aliens, and I strongly suspect that the workers were just the former and not the latter. And, of course, he's not "anti-immigration".
Then, from the article:
When Tancredo hired a construction crew to transform his drab basement into a high-tech pleasure den in October 2001, however, he did not express concern that only two of its members spoke English. Nor did he bother to check the workers' documentation to see if they were legal residents of the United States. Had Tancredo done so, he would have learned that most of the crew consisted of undocumented immigrants, or "criminal aliens" as he likes to call them. Instead, Tancredo paid the crew $60,000 for its labor and waited innocently for the completion of his elaborate entertainment complex.
1. As stated above, he contracted with a contractor [1].
2. He probably would have violated several state and federal laws if he had inquired about their status; in that case (as with Mitt Romney), the far-left would be accusing him of racial profiling and discrimination.
3. As stated above, Tancredo knows the difference between those who are just illegal aliens and those who are criminal aliens. He doesn't call the former with the latter term unless it applies.
During the renovation process, two illegal workers hired by Tancredo were alerted to his reputation for immigrant bashing. They went straight to the Denver Post to complain. Tancredo "doesn't want us here, but he'll take advantage of our sweat and our labor," one of the workers complained to the Post on September 19, 2002. "It's just not right."
1. Once again, Tancredo didn't "hired" them directly [1].
2. An interesting question is who exactly "alerted" the workers; was it a setup?
3. The Post article followed and coincided with the
Jesus Apodaca incident, in which the
Denver Post collaborated with the Mexican consulate to push giving college discounts to illegal aliens. See the September 29, 2002 letter Tancredo wrote to the Post (
link). They apparently wrote 24 stories about the issue... over nine days. More response
here.
...Then defiance gave way to vitriol as the congressman dubbed undocumented immigrants, "the face of murder."
Blumenthal is being extremely misleading; Tancredo wasn't refering to all "undocumented immigrants", but to coyotes, drug smugglers, and terrorists [2].
It continues, this time with mere smears (I didn't bother clicking to the second page to see if there are more lies):
Down on the border, Tancredo announced his support for the Minutemen, providing the anti-immigrant militia with a veneer of respectability while its pistol-packing members hunt for brown-skinned evildoers.
Obviously, the use of the word "militia" is meant to convey an incorrect portrayal of their actions, as is the word "hunt", and of course, they're interested in evildoers of all skin colors.
UPDATE: Howie Klein linked to the Blumenthal article (downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2007/12/heath-shuler-joins-tom-tancredo-know.html), and I left a one-sentence comment linking to this post; the comment appeared and was then deleted. He's really afraid that his readers will
learn the truth, isn't he.
UPDATE 2: I'm not going to bother registering to comment, but Pam Spaulding links to the article in the falsely-titled post "Tom Tancredo hired 'criminal aliens' to build his family's rec room" (pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3807). She reposted that at Pandagon; let's see if they approve the comment I left: pandagon.blogsome.com/2007/12/02/
tom-tancredo-hired-criminal-aliens-to-build-his-familys-rec-room/
Footnotes in the extended entry.
[1] The article Blumenthal refers to is "Illegal labor aided Tancredo Workers say they redid basement for immigration critic" by Michael Riley, September 19, 2002. A copy is
here.
Undocumented immigrants helped remodel U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo's
Littleton basement, two of the workers told The Denver Post. The workers said they were among a crew of five or six people who labored for contractor Creative Drywall Design of Denver, creating a home theater with terraced seating, a billiards table and game area, and a bedroom for Tancredo, a Republican and one of the nation's most vocal immigration critics.
All but one of the crew were undocumented immigrants from Latin America, according to two of the workers. The Denver Post is not naming the employees because of the possibility that identification might lead to legal proceedings against them.
Tancredo didn't break any laws, according to immigration lawyers briefed on the case. He never asked whether the workers - only two of whom spoke English - were in the country legally, said Eric Givan, project manager for the company.
The company's president said he believed all of his workers were in the country legally and that he had documentation from them on file. The two workers said their documentation was false...
As the contractor's client, Tancredo had no legal obligation to ask if all the workers were documented. In his floor speech Wednesday night, he said he couldn't legally ask that question.
"You can be sued under the Civil Rights Act if you go out and ask people who have been hired by someone else if they are here illegally or not," he said.
But a Justice Department lawyer disagreed. "If a person wants to feel more comfortable by asking a contractor to sign something assuring them that everyone who works for them is legal, they can do that because (the contractor) has that obligation in the first place," said the lawyer, who declined to be identified.
Creative Drywall owner J.J. Fukunaga said he has documents on file showing that each of the company's 15 employees is legally entitled to work in the U.S. The documents vary by employee but in some cases include copies of Social Security cards and driver's licenses, he said. When asked to show copies of those documents, he declined...
..."Tom Tancredo is no more breaking the law by having his basement refinished by a company that employs undocumented workers than anybody who goes into a McDonald's and gets served a Big Mac" by an undocumented immigrant, said Laura Lichter, a Boulder immigration attorney...
[2] From a September 18, 2002 House floor speech (
link):
...What is the most discouraging or disconcerting aspect of this whole thing is that when trying to characterize and personify the illegal immigration issue by using the Apodacas, what you do is ignore another face of illegal immigration that is much, much uglier, much nastier. That is the face of illegal immigration that you confront on the borders of this country, both the Canadian border and the Mexican border. It is the face of murder, it is the face of infiltration into the country of people who are coming to do us great harm, it is the face of drug smuggling. It is the face of rape and robbery, because coyotes who often bring these people, in this case from Mexico, into the United States, they charge them sometimes $1,000 or $1,500 to bring them into the United States illegally, and when they get to the borders they rape the women, they steal the money, they force the people into the United States into some of the most inhospitable parts of the country in terms of the desert, and they die out there. This is an ugly thing...
Posted to Immigration2007b at December 1, 2007 11:50 AM
