POLITICS

Nikki Haley’s position, proposals and ideas on immigration

The former governor of South Carolina has positioned herself as a leader that is tough on immigration. A look at Nikki Haley’s record...

BRIAN SNYDERREUTERS

Voters are heading to the polls in New Hampshire, and Nikki Haley is hoping that the majority are planning to cast their ballot for her. Nikki Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants, is running for the Republican Party. She has previously served as the governor of South Carolina for six years and had a brief stint as the United States ambassador to the UN. Haley resigned prematurely due to differences in international policy with the then-US President, Donald Trump.

Haley on immigration

Some people have criticized her for being lax on immigration laws, which she disagrees with. On her campaign’s website, Haley begins the section on immigration by explaining that she is the “proud daughter of immigrants.” To attract GOP voters, she takes a tough on the issue, saying that as Governor of South Carolina, she “aggressively cracked down on illegal immigration.” During her tenure, she signed a law that allowed law enforcement to verify “whether people are illegal immigrants.” She was also an early adopter of the E-Verify system, which forces employers to “verify an employee’s legal status” before hiring workers.

The Haley campaign has not yet released any formal proposals on immigration.

DeSantis attacks Haley on the issue

A few months ago, during Haley’s campaign against Ron DeSantis, he brought up some statements from South Carolina politics dating back almost nine years. The statement was, “we don’t need to talk about [immigrants] as criminals, they’re not.” She went on to add that many immigrants “want a better life” and that they are “desperate” to start lives in the United States.

Read more from AS USA:

“Don’t trust Nikki Haley on illegal immigration. That’s like having the fox guarding the henhouse,” said the Governor of Florida. When Haley was questioned about whether she still thinks that way, she said: “That doesn’t mean we should let them into our country.” The exchange is an example of how the GOP has moved to the right on the issue since the Trump Adminstration.

Haley was involved in a controversy related to the wall promised by Donald Trump to separate Mexico from the United States. She has stated that the wall would be useless without complementary initiatives such as increasing personnel assigned to immigration control and investing in identification applications across the country.

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