Rudy on Immigration

Last night, in an interview with Fox's Bill O'Reilly, Rudy Giuliani again put himself squarely in the president's camp on immigration reform. The mayor is for tough border security, but he has also made the case in recent speeches that real reform must include a guest worker program and a "path to citizenship." On Fox, Giuliani argued that comprehensive reform is not only practical but also aides in fighting crime and thwarting terrorists. Some highlights:

GIULIANI: Yes, yes. National Guard short-term solution makes a lot of sense. Increasing the border patrol.

O'REILLY: In the long term.

GIULIANI: Long-term over a period of time would be the permanent way to do that.

But you've got to seal the border. And you've got to do it with personnel. And you've got to do it with technology. You've got to have both.

And we have to know who's in the United States. We need to have information about who's in this country. And then you have to have a way in which people can regularize themselves as well. I mean, you need to get people out from under the table.

O'REILLY: So you would give them a pathway to citizenship?

GIULIANI: I would say -- this is a classic thing where you've got to do both, carrot and stick.

O'REILLY: Yes, but you got to do -- I think the stick first.

GIULIANI: You've got to do both.

O'REILLY: You know, you stop it and then back.

When you were the mayor in New York, illegal immigration rose in this city tremendously. I mean, you can't get a cab now with an American in there.

GIULIANI: But crime declined immensely….

GIULIANI: The Immigration and Naturalization Service would only deport 1,500 to 2,000 a year. So I said to myself I have 398,00 illegal immigrants because the federal government is not going to do anything about this. It can't. So I had to figure out how do I deal with it so that I regularize them, so that I.

O'REILLY: So how did you do that?

GIULIANI: They don't commit crimes. They don't - well, we made sure that their children were allowed to go to school for which we were criticized. But if I didn't do that, I would end up with children on the streets. If I had just said well, illegal immigrants can't have their children in school. And we tried to make their lives reasonable.

O'REILLY: How about city services?

GIULIANI: It would have been.

O'REILLY: Did you give them city money?

GIULIANI: Sure, we did. If they were necessary services. We allowed them, for example, to report crimes.

O'REILLY: Without being -- asked what their status was.

GIULIANI: Because we wanted the criminals who were committing the crimes.

O'REILLY: Right.

GIULIANI: A criminal can beat up an illegal immigrant today. He can beat you up tomorrow. So we need the.

O'REILLY: So you took the practical approach to it?

GIULIANI: But you've got to take a practical approach to it. There are 12 million illegals in this country. We got to stop illegals from coming in. And a tremendous amount of money should be put into the physical security that's needed to do that.

People and technology. At the same time, you've got this tremendous number of people who are below the table. As long as you don't know who they are, as long as you can't get them to come forward, you can't identify them, you can't photograph them, you have to figure out who they are, then you have a dangerous situation.

O'REILLY: It's interesting.

GIULIANI: Now terrorists can hide in that group.

O'REILLY: Oh, absolutely.

GIULIANI: And criminals can hide.