Jamiesfeast – Kari Lake, a candidate for the U.S. Senate, said again on Wednesday that children who came to the U.S. without the right papers should be sent back to their home countries. It wasn’t clear if this also applied to children who were born in the U.S.
Lake recently talked about an undocumented immigrant group of up to 12 million people at a news conference in Phoenix on Wednesday and on CNN. It is generally thought that this number includes a group of people called “Dreamers” who came to the U.S. as children and have grown up here.
This group of people has gained some support, even from people who want to change immigration laws and crack down on the illegal. In 2022, for example, 51% of Arizona voters wanted illegal immigrants to be able to pay college costs at the same level as residents.
A 2020 study by the Pew Research Center found that 74% of Americans agreed with giving Dreamers permanent legal status, which is not the same as citizenship. That study found that 54% of Republicans also wanted that to happen.
Lake is currently in first place for the Republican nomination. She has said many times, most recently on Wednesday, that she wants people who came during the “Bidenvasion” to be sent “back to their homeland.”
“I’m talking about people who come across since (President Joe Biden) opened up the border on the first day of his administration,” she said. “Anybody who has come across in this Bidenvasion needs to be repatriated back to their homeland.”
When asked if that was true for Dreamers, Lake avoided the question.
“I’m not sure what you want to call them.” Let me tell you something: I dream big for my country.
Lake then said that the Arizona Republic “twists language to make people who want to keep their communities safe look bad.”
“I have great compassion for the people coming over. Some of them are criminals though,” she continued. “And what I have real compassion for is the people who haven’t been shown any compassion and those are American people, our American children who are dreamers, our American families, our American individuals who have a dream to live the American Dream. And because of what’s happening with these 9 to 10 or 12 million, depending on which figures you believe, we don’t have access to that.”
Lake expressed concern for children brought across the border by themselves. She expressed her support for former President Donald Trump’s plan to “reunite these children with their families.”
In an interview with CNN on January 27, Lake also talked about the number of illegal immigrants, which is often said to include Dreamers.
“We need to sort out the 12 million people who are here,” she said. “And in order to save our homeland, we need to send them back to their homeland, and start repatriating these people back to their homeland. We can’t afford to take on all the world’s problems. We have so many problems of our own here and we’re forgetting about the American people.”