What is an "electable" position on illegal immigration?.
Bloomberg.com | March 29, 2007
Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney had a tough message on immigration at a March 22 luncheon in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
"I don't think there should be a special pathway to citizenship for those that are here illegally,"' he said. "It makes no sense at all to have a border which is basically concrete against skill and education but wide open to people to just walk on in who have neither."
Romney now calls Senate Republicans' guest-worker plan ``just plain wrong'' and aligns himself more closely with House Republicans' emphasis on English-only education and construction of a 700-mile fence on the U.S.-Mexico border. He also favors a special identity card that employers could use to screen out job applicants in the country illegally.
In a Feb. 18 interview with ABC News correspondent George Stephanopoulos, Romney stressed his opposition to special citizenship opportunities for undocumented workers. "Those people should go to the back of the line,'' he said. "People who are here illegally should not get any benefit by being here.''
How things change...
Over a year ago, Romney said it would be impractical to deport 11 million undocumented workers and suggested giving some the path to citizenship he criticizes today. "The 11 million or so that are here are not going to be rounded up and box-carted out of America," Romney said in a March 29, 2006, interview with Bloomberg News.
In his Bloomberg interview last year, Romney said: "We need to begin a process of registering those people, some being returned and some beginning the process of applying for citizenship and establishing legal status."
Public Opinion
Romney, 60, confronts grassroots anger over the flood of illegal immigrants almost daily. In Council Bluffs, that meant hearing from people like Carol Cates, 53, a local police officer. "It's going to bankrupt our nation if we don't make some changes soon," said Cates, who came to size Romney up at the luncheon. "That's almost a deal-breaker for me. If they're soft on immigration, I won't even consider them.''
Eleven years later, Mr. Giuliani is the one running for president, and with a record on social issues to the left of most Republicans, he has been trying to appeal to fiscal conservatives. In those circles, the word of Mr. Forbes, the magazine executive who also ran for president in 2000, carries considerable weight.
Read the Immigration debate article.
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Mitt Romney
