America's pro-amnesty forces know exactly how unpopular amnesty is. The majority has never supported it, it's been politically disastrous for its adherents, and it's not likely to grow more palatable any time soon. As a result, the faithful (from both parties) decided to start using the term "comprehensive immigration reform."
There are about as many definitions for "comprehensive immigration reform" as there are politicians using the term, but one thing is constant. Comprehensive reform includes some form of amnesty and, usually, precious little in the way of border protections.
So, when a long time "immigration reformer" like Jeb Bush claims he'd eliminate Barack Obama's illegal executive orders on amnesty; it's worth parsing his words a bit.
Specifically, Bush says he would "absolutely, of course" undo Obama's pen-stroke violation of the constitution. Unfortunately, the way he'd do it means we're splitting hairs...
Megyn Kelly asks Bush "how would you do it, once those folks are here?"
To which Bush replies, "Passing meaningful reform of immigration, and make it part of it." In other words, Bush would make revocation of Obama's amnesty contingent upon his own vision of immigration reform. He then goes on to say he would have supported the Gang of Eight amnesty bill to "get beyond this."
To put a finer point on it, Bush would revoke Obama's amnesty as part of a deal to replace it with a different amnesty of his own.
How, exactly, is this any different from Hillary's "Comprehensive immigration reform will fix the jobs market" comments? Jeb is making the same arguments, almost verbatim, that she made just a week ago. Do they simply agree this much? Is this why Jeb presented Hillary with his National Constitution Center’s 2013 Liberty Medal?
More importantly, if this is the kind of messaging his campaign is going to be doing, it's probably best that he quits before it even gets started. This will never play to the base, and without the base he's doomed from the get-go.
...And by the way. Supporting bad bills just to "get beyond" problems rather than actually solving them? That's exactly the kind of kick-the-can mentality we don't need.
America's pro-amnesty forces know exactly how unpopular amnesty is. The majority has never supported it, it's been politically disastrous for its adherents, and it's not likely to grow more palatable any time soon. As a result, the faithful (from both parties) decided to start using the term "comprehensive immigration reform."
There are about as many definitions for "comprehensive immigration reform" as there are politicians using the term, but one thing is constant. Comprehensive reform includes some form of amnesty and, usually, precious little in the way of border protections.
