The first major policy difference between third district Republican congressional candidates Jack Kelly and Chris Myers emerged today over how the United States should secure its border with Mexico.
Kelly said that Myers’s contention that “building solid walls” along the border “is not the answer,” which was published in a Philadelphia Inquirer story that ran today, puts him in line with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Myers said that high-tech solutions, like cameras and sensors, are a better solution.
“I could not disagree with Chris Myers more about building a fence at the US-Mexican border. While I agree that technology plays a part in securing our border, we must build a physical fence as well,” said Kelly in a press release. Chris is someone that Republicans simply can’t trust. Whether it’s donating to liberal Democrats, missing primary elections, or not supporting building a fence – Chris Myers is wrong.”
Myers’s stance is in line with his employer, Lockheed Martin, which submitted bids to the Department of Homeland Security to build a “virtual border fence” in 2006. The company advocates a high-tech border security network.
Expect that to be another barb Kelly will use against Myers, who he has accused of acting as a lobbyist for the defense industry.
In response, the Myers campaign brought up the job Kelly had with the South Jersey Transportation Authority, which they have characterized as a patronage position that he’s unqualified for.
“Jack Kelly is about as qualified to speak about immigration policy as he was to work as the Airport Business Manager at the Atlantic City Airport,” said Myers spokesman Chris Russell. “Chris Myers believes spending billions on an unsightly fence that illegals can dig right under, and that covers less than a third of the 2,000 mile long US-Mexican border isn’t the answer to stopping illegal immigration. Instead, Chris Myers wants more agents patrolling the border, an end to failed catch and release policies that perpetuate the illegal immigrant problem, a commitment to enforce our current laws, and to apply advanced technologies that monitor the entire border from the ground and the air."
