ABC News: Mitts Off! Romney Blasts Giuliani over 'Sanctuary' for Illegal Immigrants

By JAKE TAPPER with RON CLAIBORNE BETTENDORF, Iowa, Aug. 8, 2007 New York became a sanctuary city, where illegal immigrants enjoy some measure of protection, through an executive order signed by Mayor Ed Koch in 1989, five years before Giuliani became mayor in January 1994.

But if Giuliani inherited the policy, he reissued it and seemed to embrace it.

At a June 1994 press conference, Giuliani decried anti-illegal immigration policies as unfair and hostile.

"Some of the hardest-working and most productive people in this city are undocumented aliens," Giuliani said at the time. "If you come here and you work hard and you happen to be in an undocumented status, you're one of the people who we want in this city. You're somebody that we want to protect, and we want you to get out from under what is often a life of being like a fugitive, which is really unfair."

At a speech in Minneapolis in 1996, Giuliani defended Koch's executive order, that, in his words "protects undocumented immigrants in New York City from being reported to the INS while they are using city services that are critical for their health and safety, and for the health and safety of the entire city."

"There are times when undocumented immigrants must have a substantial degree of protection," Giuliani said.

The most amazing thing about Giuliani's immigration enthusiasm is that it was not only undiminished by various mass murders committed by immigrants, which he used as an excuse to try to get gun control imposed on Americans outside New York state, but it was even undiminished by 9/11 itself.

See my article after 9/11 and his interview with Barbara Walters on September 17, 2001.