Radio Host Jan Mickelson: ‘What’s Wrong With Slavery?’ For Undocumented Immigrants
Right wing radio host Jan Mickelson, who has interviewed several of the current crop of Republican presidential contenders on his show, has suggested that the government should enslave undocumented immigrants as a deterrent to illegal immigration.
Mickelson made the comments on his show on August 17, before defending his stance when a caller equated it with slavery. According to Media Matters, Mickelson asserted that his plan would begin with erecting signs along the interstate system, warning any undocumented immigrants in Iowa that they had between 30 to 60 days to leave the state. Following that grace period, Mickelson suggested that anyone who could not “demonstrate their legal status to the satisfaction of the local and state authorities” could then be made “property of the State of Iowa.”
“So if you are here without our permission, and we have given you two months to leave, and you’re still here, and we find that you’re still here after we we’ve given you the deadline to leave, then you become property of the State of Iowa. And we have a job for you. And we start using compelled labor, the people who are here illegally would therefore be owned by the state and become an asset of the state rather than a liability and we start inventing jobs for them to do.”
Republican presidential hopeful Lindsay Graham on air now at WHO with Jan Mickleson pic.twitter.com/Cw8uuENyYY
— WHO Radio (@whoradio) July 31, 2015
As Jezebel reports, Mickelson went on to discuss how the logic behind enslaving undocumented immigrants could be applied to the Mexico-U.S. border.
“Same way. We say, ‘Hey, we are not going to make Mexico pay for the wall, we’re going to invite the illegal Mexicans and illegal aliens to build it. If you have come across the border illegally, again give them another 60-day guideline, you need to go home and leave this jurisdiction, and if you don’t you become property of the United States, and guess what? You will be building a wall. We will compel your labor. You would belong to these United States. You show up without an invitation, you get to be an asset. You get to be a construction worker.'”
The construction of a wall along the Mexican border has been a centerpiece of Donald Trump’s immigration plan, in which he has asserted that he would compel Mexico to pay for its construction, as the Inquisitr previously reported (At no time, however, has he suggested using slave labor to build such a wall).
Influential right-wing radio host: enslave undocumented immigrants if they don’t leave http://t.co/VYRdIETd2Z pic.twitter.com/iq4Oxbj6h5
— Media Matters (@mmfa) August 19, 2015
Later in the show, a caller suggested to Mickelson that his plan “sounds an awful lot like slavery.” In response, Mickelson asked, “Well, what’s wrong with slavery?”
Recently, Mickelson has hosted several GOP presidential contenders (including Carly Fiorina, Rick Santorum, and Ben Carson) on his show while they visited the Iowa State Fair. Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) also appeared on Jan Mickelson’s show following his comments, though the pair did not discuss the host’s plan to use undocumented immigrants for slave labor.
