The seventh question of the night brought up the inevitable immigration topic, which has taken a backseat as of late due to other hot button issues hogging the spotlight this election season. However, the need to find a solution to rampant illegal immigration has not gone away.
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Lorraine Osorio asked ?Mr. Romney, what do you plan on doing with immigrants without their green cards that are currently living here as productive members of society??
Here?s the video of the first part of the ensuing discussion:
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Here?s Mitt Romney?s answer to the original question:
ROMNEY:?Thank you for your question. And let me step back and tell you what I would like to do with our immigration policy broadly and include an answer to your question.
But first of all, this is a nation of immigrants. We welcome people coming to this country as immigrants. My dad was born in Mexico of American parents; Ann?s dad was born in Wales and is a first-generation American. We welcome legal immigrants into this country.
I want our legal system to work better. I want it to be streamlined. I want it to be clearer. I don?t think you have to ? shouldn?t have to hire a lawyer to figure out how to get into this country legally. I also think that we should give visas to people ? green cards, rather, to people who graduate with skills that we need. People around the world with accredited degrees in science and math get a green card stapled to their diploma, come to the U.S. of A. We should make sure our legal system works.
It is notable that the idea listed above ? making it harder for immigrants without degrees to enter the country ? has already been through the House and was shot down. Why? Because it made it much more difficult for immigrants to get into the country in the first place, and, as Romney stated, ?we are a nation of immigrants.?
ROMNEY: Number two, we?re going to have to stop illegal immigration. There are 4 million people who are waiting in line to get here legally. Those who?ve come here illegally take their place. So I will not grant amnesty to those who have come here illegally.
They ?take their place?? That?s interesting. I wasn?t aware you could simply swap them in and out! I?m sure those who live here and raise their families and work in our economy with menial jobs that must be done (education doesn?t help much for those) would simply love to hear their entire lives so callously disregarded.
ROMNEY: What I will do is I?ll put in place an employment verification system and make sure that employers that hire people who have come here illegally are sanctioned for doing so. I won?t put in place magnets for people coming here illegally. So for instance, I would not give driver?s licenses to those that have come here illegally as the president would.
The kids of those that came here illegally, those kids, I think, should have a pathway to become a permanent resident of the United States and military service, for instance, is one way they would have that kind of pathway to become a permanent resident.
In this case, my personal belief is that they should be able to take a citizenship test and get it that way. They?re already here. Forcing them through the entire immigration proceedings might make sense from a legal standpoint, but this is one case where the law needs a serious humanity injection. They are?people.?Hence the need for immigration reform. Suggesting that the children of immigrants should enlist in our military as cannon fodder in order to live here is extremely offensive.
ROMNEY: Now when the president ran for office, he said that he?d put in place, in his first year, a piece of legislation ? he?d file a bill in his first year that would reform our ? our immigration system, protect legal immigration, stop illegal immigration. He didn?t do it.
He had a Democrat House, a Democrat Senate, super majority in both Houses. Why did he fail to even promote legislation that would have provided an answer for those that want to come legally and for those that are here illegally today? What?s a question I think the ? the president will have a chance to answer right now.
President Barack Obama?s reply:
OBAMA: Lorraine ? we are a nation of immigrants. I mean, we?re just a few miles away from Ellis Island. We all understand what this country has become because talent from all around the world wants to come here. People are willing to take risks. People who want to build on their dreams and make sure their kids have an even bigger dreams than they have.
But we?re also a nation of laws. So what I?ve said is we need to fix a broken immigration system and I?ve done everything that I can on my own and sought cooperation from Congress to make sure that we fix the system.
The first thing we did was to streamline the legal immigration system to reduce the backlog, make it easier, simpler, and cheaper for people who are waiting in line, obeying the law to make sure that they can come here and contribute to our country and that?s good for our economic growth.
They?ll start new businesses. They?ll make things happen to create jobs here in the United States.
Number two, we do have to deal with our border, so we put more border patrol on the?any time in history and the flow of undocumented works across the border is actually lower than it?s been in 40 years.
What I?ve also said is if we?re going to go after folks who are here illegally, we should do it smartly and go after folks who are criminals, gangbangers, people who are hurting the community; not after students, not after folks who are here just because they?re trying to figure out how to feed their families. And that?s what we?ve done. And what I?ve also said is for young people who come here, brought here often times by their parents. Had gone to school here, pledged allegiance to the flag. Think of this as their country. Understand themselves as Americans in every way except having papers. And we should make sure that we give them a pathway to citizenship.
This statement shows a stark contrast between Romney and Obama. While Romney wants to deport those who are looking for work, Obama wants to concentrate on criminals. While Romney wants to put the youth in the military, Obama understands that they are just as American as you and I, except for where it truly counts: the paperwork.
OBAMA: And that?s what I?ve done administratively. Now, Governor Romney just said, you know he wants to help those young people, too, but during the Republican primary, he said ?I will veto the DREAM Act that would allow these young people to have access.? His main strategy during the Republican primary was to say ?We?re going to encourage self-deportation.? Making life so miserable for folks that they?ll leave. He called the Arizona law a model for the nation. Part of the Arizona law said that law enforcement officers could stop folks because they suspected maybe they looked like they might be undocumented workers and check their papers.
Arizona?s racial profiling laws are disgusting, and Romney wants to make them the model for the nation (he disputes that later, but Obama refutes his disputation). He also is against the DREAM Act, which would:
[...] provide conditional?permanent residency?to certain undocumented residents of?good moral character?who graduate from U.S. high schools, arrived in the United States as minors, and lived in the country continuously for at least five years prior to the bill?s enactment. If they were to complete two years in the military or two years at a four-year institution of?higher learning, they would obtain temporary residency for a six-year period. Within the six-year period, they may qualify for permanent residency if they have ?acquired a degree from an institution of higher education in the United States or [have] completed at least 2 years, in good standing, in a program for a bachelor?s degree or higher degree in the United States? or have ?served in the armed services for at least 2 years and, if discharged, [have] received an?honorable discharge.? (Wikipedia)
Obama continues and criticizes ?papers please? laws:
OBAMA: You know what? If my daughter or yours looks to somebody like they?re not a citizen, I don?t want ? I don?t want to empower somebody like that. So, we can fix this system in a comprehensive way. And when Governor Romney says, the challenge is, ?Well Obama didn?t try.? That?s not true. I have sat down with Democrats and Republicans at the beginning of my term. And I said, let?s fix this system. Including Senators previously who had supported it on the Republican side. But it?s very hard for Republicans in Congress to support comprehensive immigration reform if their standard bearer has said that this is not something I?m interested in supporting.
?Mitt Romney was allowed a reply, and here it is:
ROMNEY:?I did not say that the Arizona law was a model for the nation in that aspect. I said that the E-Verify portion of the Arizona law, which is ? which is the portion of the law which says that employers could be able to determine whether someone is here illegally or not illegally, that that was a model for the nation. That?s number one.
I addressed the lack of truth in this statement previously, and Obama will below.
ROMNEY: Number two, I asked the president a question I think Hispanics and immigrants all over the nation have asked. He was asked this on Univision the other day. Why, when you said you?d filed legislation in your first year didn?t you do it? And he didn?t answer. He ? he doesn?t answer that question. He said the standard bearer wasn?t for it.
He?s really going to bring up Univision? You mean the network he got a special spray tan for?
ROMNEY: I?m glad you thought I was a standard bearer four years ago, but I wasn?t.
Four years ago you said in your first year you would file legislation.
In his first year, I was just getting ? licking my wounds from having been beaten by John McCain, all right. I was not the standard bearer.
My ? my view is that this president should have honored his promise to do as he said.
Now, let me mention one other thing, and that is self-deportation says let people make their own choice. What I was saying is, we?re not going to round up 12 million people, undocumented illegals, and take them out of the nation. Instead let people make their own choice. And if they ? if they find that ? that they can?t get the benefits here that they want and they can?t ? and they can?t find the job they want, then they?ll make a decision to go a place where ? where they have better opportunities.
Basically, he wants to make living conditions for them here worse than they would be in their original country. So much for ?the land of opportunity.?
ROMNEY: But I?m not in favor of rounding up people and ? and ? and taking them out of this country. I am in favor, as the president has said, and I agree with him, which is that if people have committed crimes we got to get them out of this country.
Here?s President Obama?s reply to Romney?s rebuttal:
OBAMA: I do want to make sure that ? I do want to make sure that we just understand something. Governor Romney says he wasn?t referring to Arizona as a model for the nation. His top adviser on immigration is the guy who designed the Arizona law, the entirety of it; not E-Verify, the whole thing. That?s his policy. And it?s a bad policy. And it won?t help us grow.
Having immigration policy dictated by the man that created one of the most racist laws in recent memory seems like a bit of a bad idea if you wish to promote yourself as not being out-of-touch.
OBAMA: Look, when we think about immigration, we have to understand there are folks all around the world who still see America as the land of promise. And they provide us energy and they provide us innovation and they start companies like Intel and Google. And we want to encourage that.
Now, we?ve got to make sure that we do it in a smart way and a comprehensive way, and we make the legal system better. But when we make this into a divisive political issue, and when we don?t have bipartisan support ? I can deliver, Governor, a whole bunch of Democrats to get comprehensive immigration reform done, and we can?t?
ROMNEY:?[interrupting] I?ll get it done. I?ll get it done. First year?
OBAMA: ? we can?t ? we have not seen Republicans serious about this issue at all. And it?s time for them to get serious on it.
Unfortunately, the Republican and Democrat ideas of ?immigration reform? are very, very different. The entire debate (video and transcript) can be found here.
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Tags: Arizona, Barack, debate, hispanic, illegal, illegal immigration, Illegals, Immigration, Immigration Reform, Mexican, Mitt, Obama, presidential debate, racist, Romney, second debate
Source: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/10/17/romney-military-immigration/
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