Video flashback: President Clinton condemns ‘illegal aliens’ in 1995 SOTU
Neil W. McCabe
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In his 1995 State of the Union address, President William J. Clinton called for stricter enforcement of immigration laws and condemned the damage illegal aliens, his very words, inflict on the public treasury and American workers.
Nothing shows how much the Democratic Party has changed in its heyday at the country’s majority party as its position on illegal immigration.
Clinton received a standing ovation from both sides of the House chamber that stopped the speech.
Today, Democrats celebrate illegal immigration and have gone so far as to give these aliens sanctuary from federal law enforcement in the jurisdictions they control.
Watch President William J. Clinton talk about his disgust with illegal aliens in his 1995 State of the Union address:
“All Americans, not only in the states most heavily affected, but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants,” said Clinton.
“That’s why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens,” he said.
The president also namechecked African-American civil rights leader Barbara C. Jordan, the former Democratic Member of Congress from Texas, Clinton named to lead the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform in 1993.
“In the budget, I will present to you we will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better identify illegal aliens in the workplace as recommended by the commission headed by former congresswoman Barbara Jordan,” Clinton said.
Rep. Barbara C. Jordan (D.-Texas) (File photo)
In Jordan’s first commission report “U.S. Immigration Policy: Restoring Credibility,” it wrote:
Deportation is crucial. Credibility in immigration policy can be summed up in one sentence: Those who should get in, get in; those who should be kept out, are kept out; and those who should not be here will be required to leave.
Jordan was a strong defender of legal immigration who once said, “It is both a right and a responsibility of a democratic society to manage immigration so that it serves the national interest.”
It was Jordan, who also said: “Any nation worth its salt must control its borders.”
Clinton acknowledged in his address that American is a nation of immigrant, but he cautioned that we are a nation of laws.
“It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it,” he said.
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