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Top GOP Hopefuls Keep Distance on Immigration
A Change in Feelings
GOP Sen. John McCain, right, worked on border security and immigration changes last year alongside Democratic colleagues Barack Obama and Edward Kennedy. This year, the Arizonan has delegated work on the issues to staff members and two fellow Republicans.
(By Melina Mara -- The Washington Post)
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In an interview with reporters and editors at the Boston Globe in November 2005, Romney spoke favorably of President Bush's immigration proposals, saying the ideas under consideration should not be thought of as amnesty.
"What the president has proposed, and what Senators McCain and Cornyn have proposed, are quite different than that," he told the Globe at the time, referring to John Cornyn (R-Tex.).
But Romney never endorsed the idea, and as he began to run for president, his rhetoric changed. At the annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Committee in March, Romney said: "McCain-Kennedy gives benefits to illegals that would cost taxpayers millions. And more importantly: Amnesty didn't work 20 years ago, and it won't work today."
GOP voters are split evenly over whether illegal immigrants should be given a chance to apply for legal citizenship. But the same surveys show that two-thirds of Democrats favor giving such a chance to immigrants here illegally.
Romney's change, his top aides said, was the result of the legislation morphing on the Senate floor last year. "When the bill finally came out of committee, there were a number of provisions out there which the governor found objectionable," said spokesman Kevin Madden.
On the stump, Romney now talks about building a fence along the border, issuing high-tech identification cards to immigrant workers and increasing the amount of legal immigration.
His advisers point to actions he took as governor as evidence that he has not had a conversion on the issue. In 2005, he vetoed a bill that would have granted in-state tuition rates to illegal immigrants. And as one of his final acts in office, he signed an agreement with federal immigration officials to give state police the authority to pursue immigration violations.
Beck, who favors such proposals, said that Romney "has never extolled the virtues of illegal immigration. In a very hostile environment, he has stood against rewarding illegal immigration."
But Sharry sees it differently, focusing on Romney's initial praise of the McCain-Kennedy bill and the change since then. "He was pro-immigrant until he had that conversion on the road to Iowa," Sharry said.
