Wall Street Journal
By Reid Epstein
July 20, 2015
Some politicians get energized when challenged by protesters. Scott Walker appears calm.
While
union protesters are a regular presence outside the Wisconsin
governor’s 2016 presidential campaign stops, Sunday afternoon marked a
rare occasion of his being directly
challenged by someone inside of one of his events.
Here,
in a no-stoplight town of 450 where Mr. Walker lived as a boy, he’d
just concluded an abbreviated version of his stump speech when a
13-year-old girl from Waukesha,
Wis., approached him. Mr. Walker put his arm around her shoulder and
posed for a photograph. The girl, Leslie Flores, then asked, “Governor
Walker, why are you trying to break my family apart?”
Mr.
Walker didn’t flinch. Within seconds he mentioned he didn’t have time
for a discussion and turned to walk toward a Fox News crew waiting to
record a live interview.
Mr. Walker described his style as a regional affect during a stop earlier in the day in Cedar Falls.
“In
the Midwest we just take care of problems. We don’t make a lot of fuss,
we just go out and get the job done and we go back to work,” he said.
“Sometimes I think people
don’t understand that. That’s why we didn’t lash out [during the 2011
protests against his legislation to strip public-sector unions of
collective-bargaining rights]. We just got the job done and moved
forward.”
Meanwhile,
the Flores family – Leslie was with her father, José, an undocumented
immigrant who works as a painter, and 7-year-old brother Luis – told the
dozen or so reporters
traveling with the Walker campaign their plight. José Flores, 38 years
old, came to the U.S. illegally from Mexico 19 years ago. He said he is
eligible for President Barack Obama‘s deferred action program for parents of U.S. citizens. (A federal court has
ruled the Mr. Obama doesn’t have the authority to implement the
program.) Organizers from Voces de la Frontera, the Wisconsin
immigrants’ rights organization that brought the Flores family here,
recorded the exchanges on their smartphones.
“My family is at risk of being separated by being deported,” Leslie Flores told the reporters
The
immigration issue is a delicate one for Mr. Walker, especially in Iowa
where would-be 2016 Republican caucus-goers are steadfastly opposed to
Mr. Obama’s executive
actions on immigration and any path to citizenship for the
undocumented. For a decade until earlier this year, Mr. Walker was in
favor of a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants in the U.S. In
2013, when the Senate was weighing an overhaul to the nation’s
immigration laws, Mr. Walker said increasing border security was
unnecessary.
Once
he began building a profile as a presidential candidate, Mr. Walker
offered a different view. Now, as part of his regular stump speech, he
says he is opposed to a
path to citizenship (though he has offered a slightly different view in
some private conversations), decries “amnesty” and pledges to secure
the border. At his direction, Wisconsin joined 25 other states in a
lawsuit to block Mr. Obama’s DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents) program, for
which Mr. Flores said he qualifies.
After
his Fox News interview and a tour of the Dietz family farm – Janice
Dietz was his childhood babysitter – that included a photo-op with a
line of a half-dozen cows,
Mr. Walker returned to the Flores family. Leslie had tears welling in
her left eye and streaming down her cheek. Both sides were prepared for
the second confrontation, and Mr. Walker didn’t miss the opportunity to
blame Mr. Obama for the family’s uncertainty.
“The
president had years to deal with this throughout the legitimate
legislative process. He even had his own party in charge for the first
two years,” Mr. Walker told
Mr. Flores in a calm, emotionless tone that embodied a father gently
scolding his children. “I’m not blocking anything. The president has
made this issue. I sympathize with it. But I want to make sure that
going forward we follow the law in a way that is responsible.”
The
answer wasn’t satisfactory to Mr. Flores, but it made a ready-made
soundbite for Iowa’s Republican electorate. Mr. Flores asked if he would
be deported should Mr.
Walker be in charge of fixing the immigration system.
Young Luis asked Mr. Walker: “Do you want me to come home from school and my dad got deported?”
Mr.
Walker said that’s not his plan. “That’s not what I’m talking about,”
he said. “My point is that, in America, no one person is above the law.
The president can’t make
the law just because he says it.”
One
of the camera-wielding activists traveling with the Flores family asked
Mr. Walker if he would deport undocumented immigrants before new
immigration laws could be
enacted. Mr. Walker said he wouldn’t. With that, the governor ended the
conversation and walked into the crowd of awaiting townsfolk.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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