Asking the candidates

I took on a project to see how candidates for the United States Congress would respond to a proposition. ALL seats in the House of Representatives are up for reelection. And one Senate seat.

The proposition was simple – How do you feel about turning the old Kane County Jail into a detention center for illegal aliens awaiting deportation?

I sent e-mails (and in some cases letters) to a total of 49 candidates. My total response was SEVEN candidates. Interestingly, in addition to the seven I received responses from two third-party candidates who were bumped from the ballot on technicalities.

The responses ranged from a policy of open borders to immediate deportation for anyone caught here without papers.

A couple of candidates simply replied that the jail wasn’t in their district so they weren’t going to comment on the proposal; and these were adjacent districts!

On the Senate side neither Durbin nor Sauerberg bothered to answer, although Durbin was a Senator at the time Congress approved 40,000 new beds in 2004, half of which were never provided.

Also absent were our own candidates for Representative in the 14th District, Foster and Oberweis.

And I so wanted to hear what Jill Morgenthaler had to say about the proposal since she is the former Illinois Homeland Security chief.

But alas we don’t “rate” as worthy of an answer from those who would seek our vote.

If you would like to take a look at what these seven candidates had to say please click below to be directed to the list:
http://www.legalamericans.net/MRcandidatelist.html

I gave no preconditions, nor did I suggest a format. Whatever they wanted to say, regardless of how long the answer was would have been published.

They could have said, as one candidate did, that they agree with the principle of added capacity but would leave the actual site selection up to the executive branch.

It is really sad that the candidates and the press had such little interest in this question especially since Lake County recently announced that over 21% of their inmates were illegal aliens.

I think what really happened here was that this is such a polarizing issue that politicians would rather not reveal their position. Decades of avoiding the question in Washington has led to the mess we are in. That same mentaility is exhibited here.

My guess is that six months from now a new Congress will take up comprehensive immigration reform...and absent an outcry from the public we will see the legalization of millions of illegal aliens. Warm up those fax machines because the candidates are not showing their cards now.