Mitt Romney: “DACA Kids Shouldn’t All Be Allowed to Stay in the Country Legally”
The Utah Senate candidate says he's "more of a hawk on immigration than" Trump.
by SPENCER BUELL · 3/27/2018, 11:52 a.m.
Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who’s running for U.S. Senate in Utah, wants to out-Trump the president when it comes to the nation’s young undocumented immigrants.
At a Q+A session in the Utah city of Provo, Romney reportedly said voters should rest assured that, despite his criticisms of Donald Trump, he is as conservative as they come. So much so, he said, that he thinks the hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the country illegally when they were children should be deported.
“I’m also more of a hawk on immigration than even the president,” Romney said, according to the local newspaper, the Daily Herald. “My view was these DACA kids shouldn’t all be allowed to stay in the country legally.”
Recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, an Obama-era initiative, are shielded thousands from being deported if they were brought over the border as infants or young children and did not have a criminal background. Trump announced last year that he would eliminate the program and expose those immigrants to deportation, unless a legislative fix can be found to grant them legal status. Congress has failed to do so, amid disagreement about whether to grant so-called dreamers a pathway to citizenship and on which concessions Democrats should make on immigration policy, including funding for Trump’s proposed border wall.
Trump has placed the blame on Democrats for the impasse, and has insisted that he wants to find a solution that keeps DACA recipients from being sent back to countries they hardly remember.
“Now I will accept the president’s view on this,” Romney continued, according to the paper, “but for me, I draw the line and say, those who’ve come illegally should not be given a special path to citizenship.”
He also said if DACA recipients “need to do more” to become permanent residents, including by doing things like getting a college degree, serving in the military, or becoming a teacher, the Daily Herald reports.
As a candidate for president in 2012, Romney said said he supported a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in the military and would honor the Obama-era program if elected, promising to pass immigration reform legislation that would replace it. He also said his policies would make life so difficult for people here illegally that it would lead to “self-deportation.”
https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/...t-romney-daca/
Mitt Romney Runs as Immigration Hawk: ‘DACA Kids Shouldn’t All Be Allowed to Stay Leg
Mitt Romney Runs as Immigration Hawk: ‘DACA Kids Shouldn’t All Be Allowed to Stay Legally’
by CHARLIE SPIERING
27 Mar 2018
513 comments
Failed presidential candidate Mitt Romney signaled that he was against amnesty for DACA recipients, claiming that he was more of a “hawk” on immigration than President Donald Trump.
“I’m also more of a hawk on immigration than even the president,” Romney said while campaigning in Utah. “My view was these DACA kids shouldn’t all be allowed to stay in the country legally.”
Romney’s new position suggests he is running right of his immigration views during his 2012 presidential campaign when he promised not to revoke DACA work permits issued by his opponent President Barack Obama.
“The people who have received the special visa that the president has put in place, which is a two-year visa, should expect that the visa would continue to be valid,” Romney said at the time. “I’m not going to take something that they’ve purchased.”
The former presidential candidate was strongly criticized by the mainstream media after he promoted the idea of “self-deportation” for illegal immigrants in the Republican presidential primary for 2008.
Romney is currently running for the Utah United States Senate Seat to replace retiring Senator Orrin Hatch, despite his vocal opposition to President Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary.
In his introductory campaign video, Romney praised Utah for welcoming immigrants.
“Utah welcomes legal immigrants from around the world, Washington sends immigrants a message of exclusion,” he said.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...-stay-legally/
