Thread: Immigration flip-flop finale

Immigration flip-flop finale

Presidential candidate Sen. Sam Brownback last night completed his ongoing transition on immigration, embracing the position held by most conservatives that illegal aliens should not be granted a path to citizenship.

"I will not support new paths to citizenship," Brownback, a Kansas Republican, said during last night's debate at Morgan State University in Baltimore when asked how he would handle immigration, if elected.

That's critical because, for many conservatives, granting illegal aliens a path to citizenship outside the current law (which generally requires them to return home and wait) is tantamount to amnesty.

Despite a strong pro-life voting record and a history of siding with social conservatives, Brownback has failed to catch fire with those voters in the Republican primaries.

It's a big step for Brownback, who was listed as one of the original supporters of the 2006 McCain-Kennedy immigration-reform bill and had consistently defended the concept of legalizing illegal aliens with a path to citizenship.

His first change came earlier this year, after Brownback got blasted by Iowa voters for his stance. He announced in April that he no longer supported the 2006 bill, saying he finally had a chance to study it and had concluded it led to too much immigration.

His ambivalence was clear during this year's Senate vote on President Bush's immigration bill, when he voted for it, then switched and voted against it minutes later.

In yesterday's debate Brownback said he supports work-visas instead.

"I do think in the future we should look at different work-visa-type programs as a way to be able to deal with the problem that you're identifying, which is the realistic problem of where we are today," he said.

With the loss of Brownback, that leaves three Republican candidates who are on record supporting a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens, to varying degrees: Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mike Huckabee.

-- Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times
http://video1.washingtontimes.com/dinan ... inale.html

Brownback is my senator, and i give him hell all the time. I passed out fliers at his home towns celebration about him taking money from pornographers. He is an idiot, and a johnny-come-lately on immigration.