Vander Plaats favors an Arizona-style immigration law

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Vander Plaats favors an Arizona-style immigration law
Republican candidate for governor Bob Vander Plaats said Monday that if elected he would advocate for a tough immigration law in Iowa similar to the one recently signed by the Arizona governor.

"You bet I would," Vander Plaats said. "It's negligent on our part as a government just to buy this, to say, 'You know what? They're here and we'll welcome them here.' No. It's illegal."
illegal immigrants and makes it a crime to not carry immigration documents.

Rod Roberts has said he wants to be sure public aid doesn't go to illegal immigrants.
"Arizona is a border state, and I can't begin to imagine challenges they have," Roberts said. "My approach in Iowa is to say no taxpayer-funded benefits available to any person in Iowa who is here illegally."

Branstad has said he believes in strictly enforcing existing immigration laws before creating new ones.

On other issues:

- Vander Plaats called last year's same-sex-marriage ruling "a defining issue of this campaign." He repeated his promise to put a stay on same-sex marriages with an executive order and then have the Legislature look at the issue.
Some constitutional experts have questioned the legality of that approach, but Vander Plaats called it "constitutionally sound."

Vander Plaats cited the part of the Iowa Constitution that reads, "This constitution shall be the supreme law of the state, and any law inconsistent therewith, shall be void. The general assembly shall pass all laws necessary to carry this constitution into effect."

The debate isn't about personal beliefs, Vander Plaats said; it's about the Iowa Supreme Court overstepping its bounds.
- Vander Plaats doesn't agree with what he described as the current top-down approach to education, instead favoring allowing individual districts more control.

"We want to create an element where Urbandale learns from Johnston, Johnston learns from Sheldon, Sheldon learns from MOC-Floyd Valley and from Burlington, to where there's a best-practices approach within education," he said. "Let your teachers teach, and your local school districts lead. ... And let's learn from one another."
He would cut the universal preschool program to save more than $100 million.

- Vander Plaats, a former high school economics teacher, said he would eliminate the corporate income tax and drastically reduce the capital gains tax, from nearly 9 percent to below 4 percent. That would mean less money in state coffers.

"You have to shrink government," he said. "We've grown government, grown the public sector at the expense of the private sector. ... How long can we grow the public sector at the expense of the private sector and expect everything to turn out well?"
- Vander Plaats also spoke of shifting responsibility for funding care for people with mental illnesses, developmental disabilities and other disabilities from counties to the state to move the burden off property taxes.

"We can run a more effective and more efficient system from the state level for this population, which is a very vulnerable population," he said.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/art...mmigration-law