Reporter grills Ben Carson over 'indentured servitude' plan to make immigrants work without rights

WOI anchor Sabrina Ahmed told Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson that his plan to make immigrants take jobs without giving them the same rights as other workers sounded "eerily like indentured servitude."

In an interview that aired on Sunday, Carson said that he would build a double wall on the Mexican border and "then once the border is secure, you turn off the spigot that dispenses the goodies."

"And you have to do that for all the borders, by the way, not just the southern border," he added. "Because I'm also concerned about global jihadists who want to come here. They are very dangerous people."

As for the 11 million undocumented immigrants who were already in the United States, Carson said that he would not to deport them if they were "willing to engage as guest workers."

"They do not get voting rights and they do not become citizens unless the citizens of the United States want them to become citizens," he explained. "I've talked to many farmers with very large farms, including some here in Iowa, who say they have great difficulty hiring Americans to do that job even though they start them out at $11 an hour."

"Doesn't that eerily sound like indentured servitude?" Ahmed noted.

"It sounds like you're not forcing anybody to do anything," Carson replied. "So, I don't see how that would be indentured servitude. Nobody has to do it. They are perfectly welcome to leave."

"But they wouldn't have the same rights that if they were here as an American citizen?" Ahmed pressed.

"No, they wouldn't because they're not here legally," Carlson insisted. "So, it would seem a little bit unfair to me that you give them the same privileges as American citizens when they're here illegally."

"But, wouldn't they be here legally if they were given the path that you're talking about?" the WOI anchor wondered.

Carson argued that Ahmed was "talking [about] a slippery slope."

"If you give them an inch, they'll want to take a mile," he quipped. "No, we only give them an inch, we don't give them a mile."

"We'd like to take care of everybody else, it would be wonderful if we could," the candidate added. "But it's sort of like being in a lifeboat that has a capacity of 50 people and you look out and there's 10 more. 'Oh God, what are you going to do? Well, we'll just take them on.' Then everybody sinks and dies."

Watch the video below from WOI, broadcast Oct. 4, 2015.