Campaign Statements — Immigration

Tuesday June 26, 2012

“More latitude to the states, not less”

“Given the failure of the immigration policy in this country, I would have preferred to see the Supreme Court give more latitude to the states, not less.”

CATEGORIES: Immigration | Mitt Romney |

Friday May 25, 2012

DNC Chair: “Romney literally has the most extreme policy on immigration.”

“We have a choice of Mitt Romney who literally has the most extreme policy on immigration of any presidential candidate in history and Barack Obama who is strongly supportive and has pushed for comprehensive immigration reform against the candidate who totally opposes it. Mitt Romney’s solution is to make sure that we just deport them all.

…What he has said is that his policy would be that we should just create an environment in which the 12 million undocumented immigrants that are here would just self-deport. It’s an unrealistic expectation. It’s an inhumane expectation. Mitt Romney’s policy is to embrace fully the Arizona-style immigration law that would actually let police round up people who are doing nothing more than driving down the street and asking them for their papers and then deporting — putting them into immigration, reporting them to immigration based on simply existing.

Mitt Romney wants to fight to kick undocumented immigrants out of this country.”

- Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.)

CATEGORIES: Barack Obama | Civil Liberties | Immigration |

Wednesday May 23, 2012

“We need to move forward so that we can stop denying citizenship to responsible young people.”

“We need to move forward so that we can stop denying citizenship to responsible young people just because they’re the children of undocumented immigrants. This is a country that is at its best when we harness the God-given talents of every individual; when we hear every voice; when we come together as one American family, and we’re striving for the same dream.”

CATEGORIES: Barack Obama | Immigration |

Saturday April 21, 2012

“Obama…has brought hard times to Hispanics.”

“The Obama administration has brought hard times to Hispanics in America. Under President Obama, more Hispanics have struggled to find work than at any other time on record.”

CATEGORIES: Immigration | Mitt Romney |

Sunday April 15, 2012

“I will try to do it in the first year.”

“I can promise that I will try to do it in the first year of my second term. I want to try this year. The challenge we’ve got on immigration reform is very simple. I’ve got a majority of Democrats who are prepared to vote for it, and I’ve got no Republicans who are prepared to vote for it.”

CATEGORIES: Barack Obama | Immigration |

Sunday April 15, 2012

“We now have a Republican nominee who said that the Arizona laws are a model.”

“We now have a Republican nominee who said that the Arizona laws are a model for the country ... these are laws that potentially would allow someone to be stopped and picked up and asked where their citizenship papers are based on an assumption.”

CATEGORIES: Barack Obama | Immigration |

Friday April 13, 2012

“The Republicans have consistently demogogued the issues and have blocked action.”

“The only reason we do not have a law right now that has provided a citizenship not just for DREAM Act kids but for folks who are here, are law-abiding citizens, is because the Republicans have consistently demogogued the issue and have blocked action in Congress. This notion that somehow Republicans want to have it both ways, they want to vote against these laws and appeal to anti-immigrant sentiment when we have a nominee who said that Arizona laws—which allow those same kids with Latino surnames to potentially be picked up [and] asked for their papers—and then they come and say, ‘But we really care about these kids and we want to do something about it.’ That looks like hypocrisy to me.”

CATEGORIES: Barack Obama | Immigration |

Monday April 02, 2012

“Our immigration policies are upside down.”

“That is something that I will not just talk about in this campaign. This will be a priority of mine if I become president to make sure we finally reform our immigration laws step by step, secure the border, improve our legal immigration system, so we can keep people here and welcome people here who will make America a stronger nation.

My own view is our immigration policies are upside down. We make it very hard for people who have skills that we need — education and English-speaking and workplace skills — make it very hard for those people to come here and to stay here. On the other hand, those that don’t have any of those things are often times able to come either across the border or over-stay their visas and remain in this country indefinitely. So we’ve got it backwards.”

CATEGORIES: Immigration | Mitt Romney |

Monday April 02, 2012

“He uses [immigration] as a political weapon.”

“[Immigration] has always been a priority for the President he chooses to do nothing about. Let the immigrant community not forget that, while he uses this as a political weapon, he has not taken responsibility for fixing the problems we have.”

CATEGORIES: Immigration | Mitt Romney |