Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Wednesday that the U.S. needs to ramp up its border control to deal with the 11 million immigrants who are living in the country illegally.
“The first thing you need to do is have boots on the ground,” he said. “Then you can have an intellectually appropriate discussion about immigration reform.”
Perry criticized President Obama for a recent speech he gave in El Paso, Texas, where he said the border is safer than it has ever been.
Either the president has poor intelligence “or he is an abject liar to the American people,” Perry said. “It is not safe on that border.”
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, said he would build a fence along the border and stop giving immigrants a reason to come to the U.S.
“We gotta turn off that magnet,” he said, specifically criticizing laws like the one that Perry signed in Texas that give in-state tuition rates to illegal immigrants.
Texas Rep. Ron Paul pounced on that proposal, saying “this fence business is designed and may well be used against us to keep us in.”
“A barbed-wire fence with machine guns — sure, that would do the trick,” he said. “But I don’t think that’s American.”
