Ryan on Trump: City Leaders Should Stick to City Business

The head of Haverhill’s Republican City Committee Wednesday night lashed out at city leaders for taking sides in the national immigration debate.

Republican Chairman William H. Ryan, a former mayor and city councilor, said Mayor James J. Fiorentini and seven city councilors have more important work to do than to oppose President Donald Trump’s immigration order.

“The city leaders should tend to city business. We have lots of problems in the city,” Ryan told WHAV. “They have a right to do that, but they should be paying attention to local issues.”

Even though Ryan was also critical of the roll out of the immigration order, he said, Haverhill’s elections are non-partisan for a reason.

“We work together. I think as a group, dividing our community like Washington, is very bad for our country and bad for our community as well. Stay out of Washington politics and not be drawn in,” Ryan advised.

In addition, Ryan said, the city taking a position on such a divisive issue risks annoying business leaders who may wish to move their operations to Haverhill.

“Why do city councilors want to alienate people who want to invest in the city? It hurts the city overall. It doesn’t gain us anything.”

As to Trump’s order, banning immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days, Ryan said he agrees “They should have rolled this out a little slower. They were wrong about the way they jumped it without thoroughly informing people.” He said green card holders should not be detained, but otherwise it is good to “double check.”

“There’s no government in some of these places. It’s good to vet people coming in and why?”

15 thoughts on “Ryan on Trump: City Leaders Should Stick to City Business

  1. Veterans? I usually find that when people Talk about veterans to shore up an invalid argumet that, they are not veterans and giving false equivelencies

    I usually find them to be flag-waving Hippocrates, incapable of and averse to the testicular- fortitude required for military service.

    A colorful fellow veteran locally, describes the aforementined self-rightous shirkers like this,

    BUMPER STICKER PATRIOTS who wouldn’t give up their arm or iPod for democracy.Hell, they couldn’t kill an afternoon.”

    BTW , for the racists , dont attack that veteran because I said colorful. It means something different than colored.

  2. Many local manufacturing employee immigrants. Southwick and Cedars come to mind. Their employees attended ESL classes the manufacturers won through the states workforce training programs.

  3. Bill Ryan is a discredited hypocrite- trying to be relevant after the voters rejected him and marginalized his toady ,son-in-law.

    He involves himself in National politics when it suits his needs. An elected legislature, at the local level, has every right to express their views.

    “Buffalo-You Bill ” & his side-show son-in-law are guys who love Free Speech as long as you agree with him and his tribe of self-serving , ill -qualified, blowhards.

    The problem with this ban is not the argument over the political correctness (saying legal or not legal), Thank you Grammer police. The issue is that this is strategically unsound, extremely poorly executed and above all constitutionally questionable.

    • Whether Bill Ryan is credible or not, is really not the issue.

      The issue really is —- how many people who do not belong here can we afford to support? Are our own people who have spent their lives here to take a back seat to illegals? Our veterans, our homeless, our own disadvantaged?

      Our city politicians should be taking care of those who are already in the city (they can’t handle their responsibilities as it is), and not involve themselves in matters such as immigration control and whether we should take in more people and become a Sanctuary City, rather than spend time they don’t have trying to decide if illegal immigration is good or bad for those of us who are forced to pay for people who do not belong here.

      Our local politicians can’t even decide how to run our paid parking or the school systems, or repair the buildings it owns, on and on…. so how are they to decide if anything that doesn’t concern them is good or bad?

  4. Sue, you forgot to include the word LEGAL in your remark about the city being A CITY OF IMMIGRANTS. All of our ancestors came here LEGALLY. When one breaks into the US or any other country, he/she is an ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT, and has no right to be here in the first place. We pay dearly for these illegals, $2 Billion dollars each year as a matter of fact for Massachusetts ILLEGALS. Our kids pay even more dearly, because their education suffers when so many people are unable to speak English.

    In the past when people came to this great country, they had to have a sponsor, and that sponsor promised that the person they were vouching for would not become a “Public Charge.” The system as it exists today, requires that we pay for these folks’ every need with our tax dollars.

    Bill Ryan is right! Instead of getting involved in the immigration system, our city politicians should back off from this one.

  5. Mr Ryan is right. I understand some of these people who are always grandstanding to get free press coverage. But some of them are falling prey to the hype of the issue. I ask them all this question: How many people were detained out of all those coming here those few days ? and of those people detained, how many were kept OUT of the country ? I know the answer, do THEY ? I doubt it.

  6. Mr. Ryan, you are 100% correct on this issue.

    Shouldn’t the mayor and city councilors be more concerned about what an extremely dangerous place the city of Haverhill has become as a result of the mayor’s open door sanctuary city policies?

    Shouldn’t the mayor and city councilors be more concerned about teenage girls getting dragged into the woods of city parks by criminal trespassers in this country and city illegally?

    Shouldn’t city councilors be more concerned about all of the drug dealers that flock to Haverhill because of the welcome mat rolled out by the mayor?

    Where were all the democrats in Haverhill when a city taxpayer had his Constitutional right to Free Speech violated by the mayor because he had campaign signs on his property for the candidate the mayor opposed? Did even one democrat comment about the sanctity of the principals of our country when the mayor threatened this homeowner with fines?

    • America is an immigrant based country……but they should be LEGAL IMMIGRANTS who come here to be Americans. Not to do HARM to America. What most of these people fail to understand is that these countries HAVE failed governments, controlled by terrorists. When you cannot be sure who these people are, or what their backgrounds are should we just ignore that ? Also, it is a temporary ban which democratic leaders talked about enforcing years ago. Where was the outrage then ?

      • Remember that 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. And yet Saudi Arabia is not on the list of dangerous nations. I wonder why that would be …

  7. Willie, Willie, Willie

    Take a look around. Trumps position on immigrants absolutely, without a doubt, affects the city.

    But then, maybe if the local pols stopped looking at that issue,, they ‘d have a bit of time to call you out on your repeated attempts to orchestrate the election of school committee officers so your kin and kin-in-law can get whatever revenge they’re out for this week.