‘Nazi’ comparison draws immigration policy to forefront of NC congressional campaign
Questions about immigration are front and center in the campaign for North Carolina’s heavily Republican 10th Congressional District.
Questions such as: Is immigration helpful to U.S. businesses?
Should people living illegally in the country face mass deportation?
Is it causing fentanyl to flow across the border?
And why is it a major topic of conversation in a North Carolina congressional district that doesn’t share a border with another state, let alone a foreign country?
Enter gun manufacturer Pat Harrigan, a Republican candidate for the open seat. In a 2022 interview, he described his view as “pro-immigration.”
The interview he gave to a Charlotte radio station resurfaced this year in a Fox News story that highlighted how Harrigan compared the deportation of people living illegally in the United States to roundups of prisoners in Nazi Germany.
That’s not exactly the stance the Republican Party’s leader, former President Donald Trump, is taking.
“There has to be a pathway to citizenship,” Harrigan told WFAE while running for Congress in 2022. “From my perspective you look at countries that have rounded up and exported people from their country, it’s a list that we don’t want to be involved with: it’s Russia, it’s North Korea, it’s China, it is Nazi Germany. The horse has left the stable on the topic.”
He added that the majority of immigrants coming to the United States come to build a better life for themselves and their families.
He spoke about fast-tracking citizenship for immigrants who came to the United States as children. Those immigrants are known as DACA recipients, for the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DREAMers, for the bipartisan Dream Act legislation that would have provided them with a path to permanent residency and citizenship.
Harrigan said in the interview that before he would agree to citizenship for those migrants, the United States must gain control of its southern border and its immigration system.
Still, Harrigan’s resurfaced words became fodder for conservatives on social media, who called him a “RINO,” a pejorative term that means Republican in name only.
Harrigan’s campaign team did not respond to requests for comment from McClatchy on Thursday.
But Harrigan told Fox News in January: “My stance is clear: secure our borders first, complete the wall, deport illegal aliens who have broken our laws, and reinstate Trump’s border policies before considering any pathway to citizenship.”
The 2022 election
The campaign for one of his opponents, state Rep. Grey Mills, seized on Harrigan’s comments, detailing the misalignment from Republican talking points. Mills’ campaign set up a website highlighting the comments, labeling him “Pathway Pat.”
Mills does not support amnesty.
“If you entered our country illegally or have committed a crime, you must go back to where you came,” Mills told McClatchy in a written statement. “We can start this process in our courts and jails, and expand from there, but we cannot permit anyone who has broken our laws to stay.”
At the time of the WFAE interview, Harrigan was running for Congress in North Carolina’s 14th Congressional District against now-Rep. Jeff Jackson, a Democrat from Charlotte.
In a district that at the time leaned toward Democrats, Harrigan needed to appeal to many kinds of voters to have a hope of beating Jackson. In the end, Jackson won with nearly 58% of the vote.
But that was then. And now that Harrigan faces a five-person primary, his words have come back to haunt him.
The 10th Congressional District
Harrigan appears to be a frontrunner in the the race to represent the 10th Congressional District, currently held by Rep. Patrick McHenry.
McHenry, a 10-term Republican from Lincoln County, says people coming into the United States illegally present “a serious problem.” McHenry opposes any form of amnesty, according to his website.
McHenry announced his retirement from Congress in December, leaving several Republicans to fight to succeed the powerful lawmaker, who had led the House as interim speaker through a tumultuous three weeks following the ousting of Speaker Kevin McCarthy, McHenry’s friend.
McHenry said after House Speaker Mike Johnson replaced him that he would run again for his seat. At the time, Harrigan planned to run, for the second time, in the 14th Congressional District against N.C. House Speaker Tim Moore. Harrigan, who owns a house on Lake Hickory, in Catawba County, claimed to reside in and rent property in the 14th district.
Then McHenry changed his mind about running, and created an open seat, and Harrigan changed districts. He announced that he lived and worshiped and his kids went to school in Hickory, within the 10th District.
Mills, grassroots activist Brooke McGowan, small business owner Charles Eller and registered nurse Diana Jimison also announced plans to run in the Republican primary. Democrat Ralph Scott and Libertarian Steven Feldman are also running in the district that leans heavily to the right.
Immigration in North Carolina
A 2020 report from The American Immigration Council, which says it seeks justice and fairness for immigrants, described the importance immigration has on North Carolina’s workforce and economy.
The report found that more than 824,000 immigrants were living in North Carolina. They came from countries like Mexico, India, China, Honduras and El Salvador.
Another 766,000 North Carolinians were born in the United States but had at least one parent who immigrated to the country. But more than 200,000 others live with at least one family member who lives in the country without legal authorization.
The report also found that a significant portion of North Carolina’s workforce is made up of immigrants: one in every nine workers. They work in careers like computer and math sciences, health care, fishing, forestry and farming.
And they’re adding $20 billion to North Carolina’s economy.
During Harrigan’s 2022 interview, he highlighted that economic benefit, saying immigration provides a resource to solving the “massive labor crisis in the country.”
“Quite frankly, we are wasting the best opportunity that we have had in the last 50 years to regenerate and regrow the American manufacturing capability, domestic manufacturing, because we don’t have any labor to support it,” Harrigan said. “We have to have an ample flow of immigrants into this country.
Harrigan wants immigration reform, and said any business owner knows how expensive it is to bring in qualified labor into the United States. He said it takes a lot of time and involves attorneys. But he adds that the United States has the technology to make the process faster.
“Our country needs it, quite frankly, to be much more responsive to the modern economy and all its ails that we have in this country right now,” Harrigan said. “So I’m very pro-immigration.”
Immigration platforms
For the most part, Harrigan’s immigration positions aren’t all that different from his opponents’.
In 2022, Harrigan told WFAE that he believed the southern border “is a very real and present danger for the national security” of the United States.
Part of his concern is that, he says, every day at least 10 people from the country’s terrorist watch list are caught trying to enter the country. He said most of them were caught coming in by air and intercepted appropriately, but in May 2022, 15 were intercepted at the southern border, and he worried about others who may have crossed illegally.
A year after Harrigan’s interview, a statement released by the House Homeland Security Committee, said that 294 people on the terrorist watch list have been caught at the southern border over three years.
“What’s their intent?” Harrigan asked in the interview. “I absolutely believe we need to secure our southern border and we need to regain control of our immigration system.”
Part of Harrigan’s solution is to finish the wall former President Donald Trump began at the southern border. Opponents worry about costs that reach up to $46 million per mile, according to U.S. News & World Report. Eller, Mills and Jimison all support building the wall as part of their immigration platforms.
“Our border is under attack, and securing it is my number one priority,” Mills states on his campaign website. “I refuse to sit back and allow Joe Biden’s failed border policies to continue to contribute to an all-out invasion at our southern border.”
Harrigan and several of his opponents also want to offer resources to agents along the border.
“We owe it to our border patrol agents to provide them with every necessary resource,” Harrigan states on his website. “Only then can they truly defend themselves, truly secure our frontlines, and ensure our national security.”
Both Charles Eller and Mills agree with Harrigan on this issue.
“We must fully fund our border patrol agents and provide them with the equipment necessary to secure our southern border and prevent criminals from flooding our streets with illicit drugs like fentanyl,” Eller said on his website.
Eller also wants to send more troops to the southern border.
Mills shares Eller’s concerns about fentanyl slipping through the border and said he is in favor of using military force against drug cartels and hiring more border patrol agents.
The House Homeland Security Committee said in its report that in fiscal year 2023, 27,293 pounds of fentanyl came across the southwest border. The committee said that is enough to kill 6 billion people.
Both McGowan and Eller have called for a mass deportation of people living in the U.S. illegally.
“Charles believes illegal aliens who have invaded and are now occupying our country must be deported,” his website states. “It all starts with cutting off money to people who enter our country illegally. No free healthcare, education, housing, food stamps, or welfare. ZERO money for illegal immigrants unless it is used to deport them.”
NC Reality Check is an N&O series holding those in power accountable and shining a light on public issues that affect the Triangle or North Carolina. Have a suggestion for a future story? Email realitycheck@newsobserver.com
This story was originally published February 19, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
