Horizon: free campaign spot for Dennis Burke, & Kavanagh decimates Miranda

One of last night's topics on Horizon was state legislative bills on illegal immigration. First interviewed was Dennis Burke, who works for Governor Napolitano and is running for Attorney General. Since he's a political hack in the back rooms, not her spokesperson, and since most of us have never seen him before on TV representing her, it was pretty clear he was given this spot to help promote himself for his campaign, a way of skirting around campaign election laws. He just repeated the usual lines Napolitano delivers on illegal immigration, "it's a federal problem" and didn't have much of anything to say about actual state legislation.

Next, Rep. John Kavanagh and Rep. Ben Miranda came on to discuss modifications to the employer sanctions law. Miranda said the problem of illegal workers could be solved with a guest worker program that forces employers to pay for their health care. Miranda said we need to "force companies to deal responsibly with their role in the economy." This is how Miranda would solve the problem, have government burden businesses even more? Requiring businesses to provide health care for Americans is a bad idea in the first place, that shouldn't be extended to even more people. People should be responsible for their own health care, not their employers - I'm not sure where society ever accepted the notion that health care is the responsibility of employers, there's not much of a correlation which is why it doesn't work to force it. How is health care part of a "business's role in the economy?" Unless you're in the healthcare industry, that's a ridiculous stretch. Miranda is trying to put the blame on someone else other than illegal immigrants.

Miranda accused Kavanagh of "surrendering" to businesses because Kavanagh doesn't support a health care mandate. Kavanagh objected and pointed out that his employer sanctions law would end a business. He said that the legislature needs to keep in mind that any legislation must be "fair and firm," since that's what the voters want as indicated by their 70%-80% margins passing illegal immigration initiatives.

Miranda couldn't stop blaming everything on companies not providing health care to illegal workers, saying that if they had provided health care from the beginning, we wouldn't have any problems with this now. Kavanagh pointed out that's not true, illegal immigrants also bring with them crime, additional costs to society of educating them, as well as their children who are American citizens entitled to the full panoply of U.S. benefits.

Kavanagh said that he's proposing three additional bills addressing illegal immigation this session, one that would eliminate birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants' children, one that would eliminate sanctuary cities, and he's bringing back a bill he tried to get passed last year, making day labor loitering a criminal trespass. Miranda ended with a rambling accusation that our illegal immigration problem is all businesses' fault for not providing health care.