“Reducing the national debt requires us to have some sort of fiscal discipline. There are a million programs … that are far beyond the bounds of the Constitution.” — T. Tancredo

More than any other political figure, Rep. Tom Tancredo has been responsible for pushing border security and the illegal-alien invasion to the forefront of national attention. While the top elected officials of both the Democratic and Republican parties were pandering to the ever-more audacious open-borders lobby, Congressman Tancredo was taking a different path: he was listening to the growing outrage from Middle America over the federal government’s refusal to control our borders, and he was giving voice to that outrage in Congress, on talk radio, and on political stump speeches across the country.

In May 1999, soon after his election to Colorado’s 6th Congressional District, Tancredo founded the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus. He soon showed that he was ready, able, and willing not only to take on the Clinton-type liberal Democrats on this issue, but his own party leadership as well, including President George W. Bush. Undeterred by the GOP leaders’ efforts to marginalize him, Tancredo hammered away on the catastrophic economic, social, and national security costs of failed immigration policies. His opposition to the president’s immigration stances earned him a telephone tongue lashing from Republican power broker and Bush adviser Karl Rove, who, Tancredo says, warned him “never to darken the door of the White House again.”

The terror attacks of September 11, 2001 underscored the insanity of our immigration policies and sent many “immigrant rights” politicians running for cover. Tancredo’s Immigration Caucus swelled to over 100 members and played a critical role in blocking efforts by President Bush and the Kennedy-McCain forces in Congress to pass amnesties for illegal aliens disguised as “comprehensive reform” bills.

As a 2008 presidential candidate, Tancredo has forced the immigration debate to the front burner and has caused the other Republican and Democratic candidates to move to the right on this issue. The congressman’s presidential campaign website leaves no doubt that immigration reform is still his driving passion: it is listed as the first issue on his list of campaign issues. But it is not his only issue. Rep. Tancredo has accumulated solid ratings from organizations committed to the Second Amendment, the right to life, tax reform, and other traditional conservative issues. He has received A or A+ ratings from the American Conservative Union, National Right to Life, National Rifle Association, Family Research Council, National Taxpayers Union, and National Federation of Independent Business.

Unfortunately, Rep. Tancredo has not scored as high on THE NEW AMERICAN’S Conservative Index/Freedom Index of congressional votes. Although THE NEW AMERICAN has been hammering relentlessly on our nation’s disastrous immigration policies for the better part of three decades, we do not believe that it trumps all other issues, or that the proper solutions can be found in legislation that violates or undermines the Constitution’s crucial checks and balances. Thus, we have found ourselves on the opposite side of the congressman regarding, for instance, the Real ID Act, which attempts to deal with the illegal-alien dilemma by forcing the states to implement national standards for driver’s licenses (including invasive biometric identification), creating a de facto national ID system.

Rep. Tancredo’s cumulative Conservative Index for the 109th Congress was 73 percent. His score on our Freedom Index for the 110th Congress to date is 62 percent.

Like many other political conservatives, Tancredo appears to have succumbed to the argument that the Constitution must yield to pragmatic politics, especially when the president claims that national security is at stake, and especially when the president is a Republican. This willingness to sacrifice precious constitutional safeguards in the interest of prosecuting what is euphemistically called the “war on terror” is reflected, for example, in Rep. Tancredo’s votes supporting massive expansions of executive authority and federal police powers, such as the badly misnamed Patriot Act and bills to permit warrantless electronic surveillance, establish military tribunals, and allow the president to launch a military attack against Iran without a congressional declaration of war.

The congressman also has repeatedly lined up behind the party leadership in support of President Bush’s illegal war in Iraq (which was launched deceptively and without the constitutionally required congressional declaration of war) and has voted against congressional efforts to set a timetable for withdrawing our troops from Iraq.

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