MITT ROMNEY: REPUBLICANS SHOULD 'SWALLOW HARD,' PASS 'PERMANENT' AMNESTY BILLFormer Massachusetts Governor and failed presidential candidate Mitt Romney believes Republicans should "swallow hard" and pass a permanent amnesty bill in the wake of President Barack Obama's executive amnesty that even Romney conceded would encourage more illegal immigrants to enter the country.
Romney recently told Spanish-language Univision that Obama is "giving people false hope" and "communicating to people outside this country, ‘Hey, get into the United States illegally and stay, because they’ll always let you stay.'”
Romney's solution is for Congress to pass a “permanent clarification of our immigration laws so that people know where they stand," because Obama's executive amnesty is only temporary. But Romney said that he was "pretty confident that what the president’s doing will so inflame passions on the part of many in my party… that they will be far less likely to move aggressively on the type of permanent reform that’s so badly needed." He hoped the party could work on some piecemeal solutions on immigration to get the ball rolling.
"Maybe even then, Republicans will swallow hard and say, 'OK, even despite the fact that we now have a stick in our eye launched by the president, we’re going to go ahead and try and see if we can’t make some improvements to the immigration system,'" Romney said. "I hope we’re able to do that.”
