Texas House candidates talk immigration
The Enterprise recently interviewed the two candidates running to represent Olney in the Texas House of Representatives about issues facing District 68. David Spiller, the Republican incumbent, and Stacey Swann, an author and teacher from Lampasas County, face each other in the Nov. 5 general election.
The Enterprise queried the two candidates on their positions on school vouchers, water, mental health funding, immigration and abortion.
This is the fourth in a five-part series exploring their stances on those issues.
The Enterprise: At least one local business used an employment agency that brings Latin American asylum seekers to fill its shifts after it was unable for several years to find American workers. With Gov. Abbott’s hardline stance on the border, what would you say to the management at companies who says that they can’t afford to lose those workers?
Ms. Swann: Right now, the discussions around the Texas border and immigration are especially frustrating. Greg Abbott uses a border as a symbol and cares less about combatting real problems than he does about engaging in political theater. It’s the symbol of the wall. It’s the symbol of the razor wire. What he’s not thinking about are the practicalities. He’s not being pragmatic about what it is that Texas needs to survive and thrive. While we never want to encourage hiring undocumented people, the fact of the matter is, depending on what source you look at, 8 to 12 percent of the Texas workforce right now is undocumented. That figure doesn’t even include the legal immigration, such as that used by Tower Extrusions.
If the plan to deport every undocumented immigrant went through, besides the staggering cost of such an operation, we have to ask: what happens to Texas when you lose 10 percent of the workforce? These are jobs that are much like the Tower Extrusions jobs. Jobs that can’t be filled only using only the American labor pool. There are just not enough workers for certain jobs, espeically in construction and animal processing. The costs of food and the cost of housing would go through the roof.
What I would love Texas to do is to look at this from a pragmatic standpoint, in a way that doesn’t leave anyone in the dark and also doesn’t mean that Texas citizens are put at an employment disadvantage. We need a fair employment market for everyone. How do we address that in ways that, right now, we’re currently ignoring? I think that what Tower Extrusions is doing is the perfect solution to our problems because they are doing it legally. All the taxes are going where they should, and all the employees have workplace protections. It allows us to keep those companies in their communities, and it’s allowing those companies to grow and thrive. Unfortunately, we’ve created a political situation where the Republicans feel like they can’t bend even an inch because of immigration’s symbolism and how it drives people to the polls. Just look at the case of Springfield, Ohio, and how that situation has been polticized. Those Haitian immigrations are also here legally, and working legally, but now the community is in the middle of a firestorm. Think about how much Olney would suffer if Tower Extrusion moved their plant and the unemployment it would cause. Encouraging and expanding the type of programs that Tower Extrusion is already doing is one of the best ways to start addressing the economic issue.
Mr. Spiller: I support Tower Extrusions and their management decisions to continue to do what is necessary to operate a successful business, and to continue to provide jobs and benefits to the people of Olney and the surrounding area. As the author and sponsor of SB 4, the strongest border security bill in the history of our state and nation, I am keenly aware of the dangerous problems associated with illegal immigration and our Border Czar Kamala Harris’ policies to ignore existing law to have open borders. However, while I am vehemently opposed to illegal immigration, I welcome legal immigration. We are primarily a country of immigrants. I am not opposed to those seeking to come to our country legally to be good, productive, law-abiding U.S. citizens, and desiring to raise their families here. I applaud Tower Extrusions and will do everything in my power to help them keep as much of their operations as economically feasible in Olney, Texas.