August 8, 2007
In one of the toughest disagreements between Republican presidential hopefuls, Mitt Romney attacked rival Rudy Giuliani with harsh words on Wednesday, saying that Giuliani favored illegal immigration at the time he was mayor of New York.
"If you look at lists compiled on Web sites of sanctuary cities, New York is at the top of the list when Mayor Giuliani was mayor," Romney told the Abbey Hotel.
"He instructed city workers not to provide information to the federal government that would allow them to enforce the law. New York City was the poster child for sanctuary cities in the country."
The Giuliani campaign had made an announcement rejecting the blame. Campaign communications head Katie Levinson said, "I am not even sure we should weigh in on this, given Mitt Romney may change his mind later today about it. Mitt Romney is as wrong about Mayor Giuliani's position on illegal immigration as he was when he last mischaracterized the mayor's record and later had to apologize. New York is the safest large city in America since Mayor Giuliani turned it around -- it is not a haven for illegality of any kind. The mayor's record speaks for itself."
New York turned to a sanctuary city, where illegitimate immigrants enjoy some measure of safety, through an executive rule issued by Mayor Ed Koch in 1989.
Giuliani adopted the same policy, he reissued it and it seems that he embraced it.
At a June 1994 press conference, Giuliani said, "Some of the hardest-working and most productive people in this city are undocumented aliens," Giuliani declared at the time. "If you come here and you work hard and you happen to be in an undocumented status, you're one of the people who we want in this city. You're somebody that we want to protect, and we want you to get out from under what is often a life of being like a fugitive, which is really unfair."
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