[ansel12]

““My view is, those who are here contrary to the law should seek to establish legal residence. And if they do so, I would be delighted to provide support.” (2005)”

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If that isn’t amnesty, then what is amnesty.

I thought that it meant that you were here contrary to law, you say that you want citizenship, and then the politician provides support.

[Vigilanteman]

Two ways of looking at amnesty:

1. Univeral amnesty-- The recent crashed senate amnesty automatically awarded Z-visas to every illegal alien in the country who could prove they had been here for the given length of time. The sensible Coryn amendment which would have excluded gang-bangers and felons was voted down. Basically, we would have been stuck with untold millions . . . a lot more than 12 million, in my opinion.

2. Selective amnesty would require the illegals to come forward on an individual basis, not en masse. It would require that each individual applicant prove such things as financial responsibility such as they were paying taxes, had a clean criminal record, were learning or had mastered our language. In other words, they had the necessities to become good citizens. The key is defining how selective the amnesty is.

The senate first tried to sell the public that they were pushing selective or earned amnesty which, of course, was couched in nice sounding slogans like "path to citizenship" and "it's not amnesty, it involves fines". We the sheeple did not buy it for the obvious reason that it was a blanket amnesty pig with lipstick on it.

A lot of us, including me, would accept carefully selective amnesty if (a)it was genuinely selective of only those likely to make good citizens or at least properly behaving guest workers, and (b)the federal government had credibility on enforcement-- starting with sensible exclusions like the Coryn amendment.

[tantiboh]

~”If that isn’t amnesty, then what is amnesty.”~

Amnesty (n): the act of an authority (as a government) by which pardon is granted to a large group of individuals
http://m-w.com/dictionary/amnesty

Romney has never, to my knowledge, advocated pardoning people of violation of immigration law.

~”I thought that it meant that you were here contrary to law, you say that you want citizenship, and then the politician provides support.”~

Uh, no. That’s not what amnesty means. Read carefully, now:
“My view is, those who are here contrary to the law should seek to establish legal residence. And if they do so, I would be delighted to provide support.”

What Romney -said- (in contrast to how you’re twisting his words to suit your purpose) is that -if- an illegal immigrant takes action to establish his or her legal residence, then Romney would support that action. I think any good conservative would do the same.