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Jon Huntsman on ImmigrationRepublican UT Governor |
SANTORUM: you attract Latino voters by talking about the importance of immigration. But we need to finish the border fence].
HUNTSMAN: We can secure the border through means of fences, through technology, through the deployment of our National Guard troops, we can get it done. But they were given a driver's license before and they were using that for identification purposes. And I thought that was wrong. Instead we issued a driver privilege card, which in our state allowed our economy to continue to function. And it said in very bold letters, not to be used for identification purposes. But Latino voters want opportunity. The greatest thing that we can do on illegal immigration is fix homeland security. When are we going to have an honest conversation in this country about the root causes? We can't process people. The H1B visa process is broken. We need to bring in brain power to this country to shore up our economic might.
Yes, they came here in an illegal fashion. And yes, they should be punished in some form or fashion.
We can find a solution. If President Reagan were here, he would speak to the American people and he would lay out in hopeful, optimistic terms how we can get there, remembering full well that we're dealing with human beings here. We have to agree.
But let me just say one thing about legal immigration. Let's not lose sight of the fact that our legal immigration system is broken. And if we want to do something about attracting brain power to this country, we need to focus as much on legal immigration.
A: The thing we need to do most on illegal immigration--because there has been zero leadership in Washington., we've created this patchwork of solutions in the states, which makes for a very complex & confusing environment. When elected president, I'm simply going to prove to the American people that we can secure the border. That's what they want done. And I'm not going to talk about anything else until we get it done. We can finish. And I will talk to the fou border state governors and get verification from them that, in fact, we've secured the border. And once that is done, then we can move on. But this discussion has zero in the way of any intellectual credibility until such time as we secure the border.
Neither measure passed the Legislature during his time in office; the tuition law was passed two years before he came into office, and civil unions have never been seriously debated.
Today that strategy might seem out of step with recent GOP victories, but Weaver and many of his fellow moderates believe Huntsman is uniquely qualified to unify competing factions on the right and usher in a new era for the Republican Party.