Thompson wants to withhold funds from sanctuary cities

Washington Times:

Fred Thompson yesterday became the first major presidential candidate to embrace attrition as the solution to illegal entry, saying the government should deny illegal aliens a hiding place by cracking down on the businesses and sanctuary cities that shield them.

In the first major policy announcement of his campaign, Mr. Thompson said the federal government should punish sanctuary cities by denying them some federal funds and also should withhold money from states and localities that offer social services to illegal aliens.

"Taxpayer money should not be provided to illegal immigrants," Mr. Thompson said at a round-table discussion in Florida yesterday.

It's the strongest line of any of the major presidential candidates so far and goes straight to the heart of the issue that is dominating the Republican presidential race.

For weeks, Mr. Thompson's top Republican rivals — former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney — have been trading barbs over whose immigration record was worse.

Mr. Romney did nothing to rein in sanctuary cities in Massachusetts during his term as governor, although he did oppose granting licenses to illegal aliens and struck an agreement with federal officials so state police could start enforcing some immigration laws. That agreement was overturned by his successor earlier this year before it took effect.

Mr. Giuliani, meanwhile, sued the federal government to defend New York's sanctuary city policy. He said the city's policy of not identifying illegal aliens was part of the policy that helped turn New York into a safer city in the 1990s.

Sanctuary cities have leaped into the news after reports this past summer that several New Jersey college students were slain by an illegal alien who had been arrested for violent crimes but was released. Officials had not checked his immigration status and did not notify federal authorities.

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This is a good issue for him and for Republicans, and as the race in Massachusetts recently showed, it is an issue that appeals to many Democrat voters, if not politicians who thought the public favored their "path to citizenship" approach to the problem. It is also a reflection of a serious approach to the problem instead of facilitating the problem.