The Republican nominee for lieutenant governor is pledging to remove from Indiana anyone who does not abide by his interpretation of "the American way of life" — even if they are lawful residents of the United States.
Micah Beckwith, the running mate of Republican U.S. Sen. Mike Braun, told Fort Wayne radio station WOWO Thursday that eliminating multiculturalism will be a priority of a Braun-Beckwith administration if they're elected Nov. 5.
"We want assimilation into the American way of life. And if you will not do that, then you do not belong here. And we are going to find you and we're going to remove you," Beckwith said.
"We will figure out a solution. We will become a Texas, we'll become a Florida. And if we have to, we'll ship people to Martha’s Vineyard if we need to. But we are going to get the people who should not be here out of our communities because it is unloving if we do anything other than that."
Beckwith's remarks — initially flagged by Nathan Gotsch's Fort Wayne Politics blog — were spurred by radio host Kayla Blakeslee asking Beckwith about Haitians choosing to live in Logansport, Indiana, after being legally admitted to the United States on a temporary basis since 2011 due to simultaneous economic, security, political and health crises in Haiti, a Caribbean island nation.
The self-described Christian nationalist said he considers the presence of Haitian migrants in Indiana "an invasion," and he believes state and local leaders need to "get them out" immediately because no one will do it after their lawful status expires.
"The federal government has abandoned us. They're not going to do anything about it. And so it's our job as leaders now to step up," Beckwith said.
Beckwith rejected the assertion that his position is racist or akin to the anti-immigrant sentiment espoused by the native-born white Protestant members of the Ku Klux Klan that more or less ran Indiana a century ago, as detailed in the 2023 book "A Fever in the Heartland" by Timothy Egan.
Instead, Beckwith asserted his position comes from a place of love for his community and the need for bold action because, he said, "If you’re not bold, if you don’t know who you are, and you’re not willing to stand up, you will be bullied into silence by the Left."
"You will sacrifice your children and children’s children for the sake of the world because we are draining our resources. Our school resources, our hospital resources, our, our police and fire resources are all being drained by people who should not be here. And so you are sacrificing the very people God has called us to take care of, and that’s our community," Beckwith said.
"Those are people that grow up here. Those are people that are born here. Those are people that come here legally and are a blessing to our society."
Beckwith appeared to momentarily forget the Haitians in Logansport are legally admitted to the United States. The pastor also seems not to recall the dozens of Bible verses specifically directing believers to welcome immigrants and the needy and to treat them with dignity and respect.
In any case, Beckwith did not acknowledge the role of state and local financial incentives given to manufacturing enterprises that rely on immigrant labor to locate in Logansport in recent years as part of an effort to stem massive population losses in Cass County.
"The economic problems in Cass County and Logansport aren't due to immigrants. It is something else altogether, that has nothing to do with its new residents, and everything to do with its incumbent population," said Michael Hicks, an economist at Ball State University.
"Cass County had the second heaviest outmigration of educated adults in the state since 1980. Immigrants aren't the problem in Cass County's declining economic fortunes. Immigrants are the solution."
The Indiana Democratic Party said Beckwith's remarks show the new Hoosier State GOP "is not the party of Mitch Daniels, only the party of chaos and division."
"Four years of Micah Beckwith would be four years of distractions and conspiracies from the issues that matter: jobs, health care and education."
Braun and Beckwith are competing against Democrat Jennifer McCormick, the former state schools chief, and Libertarian Donald Rainwater, to succeed term-limited Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb.
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