DALTON, Ga. – Jan Pourquoi came as a legal immigrant to Dalton from Belgium in 1987 with only $100 in his pocket.
Less than 10 years later he had become a U.S. citizen and he now owns a company, Global Works LLC.
His problem, he told a group of about 30 Catoosa County Tea Party members Tuesday evening, is not with legal immigration but illegal immigration.
“I have nothing against an illegal immigrant per se, the truth being said as a human being, I would be one of the first if I was living across the border with a poor family, to cross the fence,” he said. “But that’s not the point; the point is about legality.”
A chorus of “amen” welcomed his comments.
Pourquoi was the guest speaker at the first Catoosa County Tea Party meeting since the primaries, Director Teresa Tatum said.
The nonpartisan group was created Oct. 22, 2009, and has about 300 people in the mailing list, she said, out of whom 20 to 40 attend the monthly meetings.
The group is based on three principles, she said: a limited government, fiscal responsibility and a free market.
And despite the fact that immigration doesn’t necessarily fall into one of those, it’s common sense, she said.
“I think we have different ideas of how the illegals should be handled, whether we arrest them or send them back to Mexico, but I would say that 100 percent of the members of the Tea Party agree that the first thing we have to do is seal the border; nothing else makes any sense to anybody; then we deal with what to do,” Tatum said.
Pourquoi said illegal immigrants are often exploited by U.S. companies.
“What upsets me the most is that the federal government permits the exploitation of a group of people at the expense of its own citizens,” he said.
The federal government basically chooses to ignore its own laws, he said.
“When you openly say you are not going to enforce the law, it’s OK, but when you openly say you are going to enforce the law, you get sued,” he added in reference to the government suing Arizona for a law it passed related to immigration enforcement.
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