Carr: I’m Running Against Alexander over His Vote for Amnesty

Tennessee State Rep. Joe Carr told Breitbart News on Tuesday that he is running against Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) in the state’s GOP primary for U.S. Senate over Alexander’s vote for the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” immigration bill.

In a phone interview shortly after he announced his candidacy on a local radio station, Carr told Breitbart News exclusively that Alexander’s vote for the Gang of Eight bill “is going to be one of the three critical issues in the campaign going forward.”

“Sen. Alexander’s support of the Gang of Eight Senate bill doesn’t address the problem with the illegal immigration issue in the United States and likewise in Tennessee,” Carr said. “The reason I know something about this is I’m the author and architect of every single significant piece of legislation in Tennessee that deals with immigration, whether it’s E-Verify or no sanctuary cities or identity theft and fraud, it doesn’t matter. I have authored and passed about half a dozen different bills specifically dealing with the activities of illegals in Tennessee and ensuring that Tennessee is a place of enforcing the law when the federal government doesn’t or won’t do so. We’ve been so successful we’ve never been sued, unlike Arizona, South Carolina, Georgia or Alabama. We’ve been very, very successful and I’m very proud of that.”

Carr added that there is no way to know if America’s immigration system is “broken,” as many advocates for amnesty argue, until President Barack Obama actually steps up and enforces the laws already on the books. “My point is this: We don’t know if our immigration laws are broken because what we have is a failure on the part of the president to enforce the law,” Carr said. “So, you don’t know if a law is broken if it’s not being enforced. What we have is we have a broken federal government system and executive branch that refuses to enforce laws. That’s the biggest problem I see. So, until such time as we enforce the law, I think it’s a little disingenuous–in fact, not just a little disingenuous, it’s crazy–to pass any new laws that the president won’t enforce.”

When asked why Sen. Alexander would vote for such a bill, Carr responded: “I don’t know, you’ll have to ask him. Why would any of our senators up there vote for, propose, sponsor or sign onto a 1,200 page bill that essentially grants amnesty to 11 million illegals? Especially with the unemployment problem that we have and the educational problems that we have. We’re going to burden the court system, the healthcare system, the educational system, with 11 million illegals? It defies logic if you’re concerned, like I am, about the sovereignty of the United States.”

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