Scott Walker clarifies his stance in illegal immigration debate
By
Craig Gilbert of the Journal Sentinel
Feb. 28, 2013
Washington, D.C. - Did Gov. Scott Walker last week endorse the hotly debated idea of giving undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship?
It sounded that way to some. A Politico story Feb. 22 reported that Wisconsin's Republican governor said he "supports a pathway to citizenship to illegal immigrants."
That prompted the group America's Voice, which supports such a policy, to trumpet Walker's stance this week, saying "the fact that a very conservative Midwestern governor is joining the ranks of Republican presidential hopefuls who support immigration reform with a path to citizenship shows just how dramatically the politics of this issue have changed."
But Walker's actual comments - made in a webcast with Politico in D.C. - were ambiguous on what has been the most contentious question in the broad immigration debate: the status of millions of people living in the U.S. illegally. Walker never mentioned citizenship in his comments.
And he told the Journal Sentinel in an interview Sunday he hasn't taken a position on citizenship for illegal immigrants.
A high-profile governor now mentioned as a potential presidential candidate, Walker gets increasingly asked about national issues, as he was in a flurry of interviews last week during the National Governors Association meeting in Washington.
And immigration reform is an especially hot topic, with the GOP struggling to improve its image with Hispanic voters and some conservatives softening in their opposition to future citizenship for illegal immigrants who pay fines, have no criminal record and meet other conditions.
During the Politico interview, Walker complained about a broken immigration system and said the U.S. should reduce the barriers to legal entry for people who want to come here and "live the American dream." He said, "We should be welcoming those people with open arms."
Then Walker was asked if he supports a bipartisan approach to give illegal immigrants living here a kind of provisional status - not necessarily citizenship - to remain in the country.
"I don't know if that's exactly (the answer) but there's got to be some way," Walker said. "For people waiting to come in our country legally, we've got make sure that they get in first, that they get their status first, because they've been following the rules and playing by the rules. After that, if there is a way to set up a process so that you enable people to come in and have a legal pathway to do that, that's something we've got to embrace. Whether or not it's that specific bill or not, I think there's some nuances to that."
While Walker talked about a "legal pathway," he said nothing about "citizenship." (Some Republicans support a pathway to legal status for undocumented immigrants but not citizenship.)
Walker also argued that there was too much focus on resolving the status of illegal immigrants and not enough on fixing the legal immigration process to allow more people into the U.S., especially to meet the demand for high-skilled and other workers.
Because of the way his comments were reported, Walker was asked again about the citizenship issue in an interview two days later with the Journal Sentinel.
"For the undocumented 12 million that are already here, have you said that you'd support finding a way for them to become citizens?" the governor was asked.
"I haven't gone into the details of that. What I said in that (Politico) interview and I've said in others is we've got to balance that, and find a way to fix - my focus is less on a way of dealing with those here - that doesn't mean it's not a part of it - but my focus has been on, first and foremost, we've got to fix what I think is a broken immigration system just for those that are seeking legal passage."
Walker was asked: "But you haven't taken a position on whether the people that are already here should have a conditional pathway to citizenship?"
His answer:
"No. Again I think long term that's going to be a part of it but I think there are too many people here in Washington who are leapfrogging over everything else and trying to get to that right away. We fundamentally don't have a system . . . to legitimately deal with people who want to come - in fact, I think you would greatly reduce if not outright eliminate the number of people who come in illegally if we had an effective, time-effective particularly, system of dealing with legal immigration."
