Thread: Romney: Illegal Aliens Who Want a Green Card Must Return

Romney: Illegal Immigrants Who Want a Green Card Must First Return Home

Published December 09, 2011
FoxNews.com

Mitt Romney said Friday that if elected president he would make illegal immigrants return to their home country in order to get a green card, in an apparent challenge to Newt Gingrich's statement that he would let some illegal immigrants with deep-rooted ties to their community stay.

The former Massachusetts governor, who has watched Gingrich surge ahead of him in the polls in recent weeks, issued one of his most definitive statements on illegal immigration during a town hall meeting in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He said people in the U.S. illegally should not be treated with "favoritism" compared with those who have used the legal process to apply for entry and residency.

"For those who have come here illegally, they might have a transition time to allow them to set their affairs in order. And then go back home and get in line with everybody else. And if they get in line and they apply to become a citizen and get a green card, they will be treated like everybody else," Romney said. "They start in the back of the line, not at the front of the line."

Though Romney appears to be taking a firmer stance on the issue than Gingrich, the statement does not represent a direct contradiction of the former House speaker's plan.

Gingrich, after stating in a recent debate that he would allow some illegal immigrants to stay in the country, has not advocated for providing those families with green cards.

Rather, he says some of those individuals could get a "red card" allowing them to be legal, but not giving them a path to citizenship. He has cited a plan from the Vernon K. Krieble Foundation as his model.

Gingrich says he's in favor of "deporting all recent unattached illegals," but wants a "local citizen panel" to consider whether law-abiding, taxpaying illegal immigrants who have been here 25 years or more "and have family and community" should be allowed to stay.

Neither candidate appears to be pushing for forcible deportation of every single illegal immigrant.

Romney stressed Friday that he has no interest in going "across the country" to "round people up," describing that as "too big a task." But he said illegal immigrants who want a green card would have to go home and "get in line."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/12 ... z1g9tW9zJn

"Gingrich says he's in favor of "deporting all recent unattached illegals," but wants a "local citizen panel" to consider whether law-abiding, taxpaying illegal immigrants who have been here 25 years or more "and have family and community" should be allowed to stay."

Just means they have been breaking laws the longest. They belong in the back of the line like everyone else!

green card or no green card go the hell back home I don't care how
long you have been In the State still I want you all the hell
Out no two way about it
No amnesty or Dream act

By Gingrich's reasoning, a murderer who has spent 25 years in jail should be pardoned because he hasn't committed any murders in 25 years.

Originally Posted by ReggieMay

By Gingrich's reasoning, a murderer who has spent 25 years in jail should be pardoned because he hasn't committed any murders in 25 years.

Exactly, ReggieMay.

As to Romney's statement, that is 100% consistent with what he has said ever since he began running for President. Good for him. This definitive statement has cleared the way for my endorsement of Mitt Romney, whom I like on other issues, such as his business experience, his executive public service experience, his commitment to repeal Obama Care, his position on protected trade policies to correct these outrageous trade deficits with China which will include and spill over to other countries as well, and what has been a career-long task throughout his adult life of taking on something that was in a mess and working diligently to untangle and correct it and get it straight and right. He did this with the Olympics, he did this with company after company at Bains Capital, he did this with Massachusetts, and he will do this with our country to every possible extent that one person can do.

If Americans will elect Mitt Romney, and put a few more Republicans in the US Senate, we will stop illegal immigration once and for all in this country and woes be to those who dare to achieve otherwise.