From Stark
President Barack Obama made a recent splash with his decision to use his executive power to create a path to legal residency for undocumented young immigrants who were brought into the country as children. Now, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is prepared to offer his own proposals to ease immigration restrictions.
Political analysts see a political motive in the actions of both men: They want to cultivate Hispanic voters.
McClatchy News Service reports that Romney is scheduled to talk about immigration issues today (Thursday, June 21) in Florida, a key presidential battleground with a large Hispanic population.
The McClatchy reporter’s lead paragraph says Romney is offering “few new proposals.” That may be true, but to me it’s big news that the Republican nominee is proposing any kind of easing of restrictions on immigration. There is a slice of the GOP base that seems to favor a zero-tolerance, zero-clemency, ship-em-all-out approach.
Romney is proposing permanent residency and even eventual citizenship for young people who crossed the border illegally with their families, as kids. But there’s a big qualifier: military service.
Romney’s package of proposed immigration reforms also includes a business-friendly increase in existing immigration quotas for highly-skilled workers, as well as the raising of immigration quotas for individual countries that tend to drive skilled professionals from those countries into Canada, Australia and so forth.
Of special interest to Whatcom County, Romney also proposes improvements in temporary visas to allow growers to bring in seasonal farm labor.
He also pledges to complete a “high-tech fence” and take other measures to stop illegal border crossing.
The big question is not what he does but how he does it; will he follow a legal path or not, that won’t be found unconstitutional somewhere down the road?
“In continuing the dramatic shift from American constitutional democracy to rule by executive fiat that has marked his tenure, President Barack Obama now claims that the illegal aliens, to whom he purports to grant what effectively is amnesty, are “Americans … in every single way but one — on paper.” That is false. They are not Americans under the only thing that matters, the thing the Obama administration has chanted like a mantra — while riding roughshod over – since its very first day in power: the rule of law.
The Constitution and congressional statutes are written on parchment. That is the only relevance of “paper” in this equation — as the “hard copy” of our social contract and of the laws enacted pursuant to it. Under the Constitution, Congress, not the president, is endowed with such a power: “To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.”…
http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2012/06/18/a-nation-of-paper-not-of-men/?singlepage=true
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
The title of the article is mis-leading. Romney is not proposing easing immigration barriers.
First of all it is Marco Rubio who has been working on LEGISLATION regarding young people who were brought to this country as children. That is not easing immigration and it is the legislative path, not an edict. Romney had plans to issue any edict.
The difference between the Rubio plan and the Obama plan is that Rubio proposed some sort of amnesty for young Hispanics who were going on to further education. It would solve a lot of problems for young Hispanics who grew up in this country and have shown a desire to become contributing members of the US society.
Obama’s edict was simply an effort to steal the thunder from the Rubio legislative efforts. Obama’s edict will hurt the Hispanics more than it will help because it doesn’t have the force of law behind it and all it did was politicize an issue that was already divisive. Obama effectively short circuited any chance of a legislative solution for these young Hispanics, who just want to go to school and pursue a career.
Mitt has a talent of saying a lot of intelligent sounding words without taking a stand one way or the other. He is a study in spinelessness. One twitter summarized the speech: “I wouldn’t not do what Obama’s doing. But I wouldn’t do what Obama’s doing either.”
For the record loooking that’s a quote from Peter Suderman not Mitt.
But He was talking about Mitt.
JG I agree with you completely, what’s really interesting is how the O did nothing on immigration when he had majorities in both the Senate and House but when his butt is on the line in an election year he offers up an illegal edict that won’t hold water(IMHO) and expects that will get him the needed Hispanic vote this year.
Methinks it sounds like a desperate move by a desperate campaign in a bunch of trouble.
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
What’s not to vote for??
The architect of Obamacare says me too on immigration.
What an enjoyable election season.
Personally I don’t like either, but there is a big difference; the way Mitt did it, it was constitutional.
Any bets on Obamacare being found otherwise?
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Romney stands for NOTHING, my friend. Well, maybe, for a foolish consistency being the hobgoblin of little minds.