Former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach appeared on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" Thursday and described the proposed New Way Forward Act and the notion promulgated by certain Democrats that illegal immigrants were as American as legal residents as "disturbing."
"The New Way Forward bill says that aliens have a 'right to come home.' Criminal aliens have a right to come home. Home? And so if they're as American as we are and they have a right to come home, this is a disturbing view of what they think it is to be an American," Kobach told Carlson. "They think that America is just a place on a map and if you stand on American soil ever so briefly, suddenly you're an American. But of course, that's contrary to centuries of American history."
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Forty-four congressional Democrats have co-sponsored the bill, which would allow people who have committed serious felonies in other countries to move to the United States legally and would make it extremely difficult for federal officials to detain illegal immigrants.
Kobach says "it's shocking" that so many Democrats have adopted the legislation and the mantra that illegal aliens are "as American as we are."
"They reject assimilation. They reject an American creed that all immigrants come to adopt. And they want to break that down, because the parts of the American creed, things like capitalism and the rule of law, are things that the Democrats no longer accept," Kobach said. "So I found it really, really shocking how they have adopted this mantra that illegal aliens are as American as we are."
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Kobach, who is running to represent Kansas in the U.S. Senate this year, claimed the legislation would "turn every city in America into a sanctuary city.
"Local police would be forbidden from helping ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] in any way," he said. "And so, just imagine: Thousands of Americans would lose their lives [or] would be injured and if you're one of those victims ... of someone who's been brought back into the United States, you've been injured by the illegal alien and you've been betrayed by your country in the name of what? It's insane."