Could you post what Santorum said after that? I seem to remember him being opposed to a path to legal status for illegal aliens.
“Could you post what Santorum said after that? I seem to remember him being opposed to a path to legal status for illegal aliens.”
He sounds like he is “willing to have the discussion” of letting illegals stay but first wants to secure the border.
SANTORUM: Well, my solution is very similar to Newt Gingrich’s.
Look, I’m the son of an Italian immigrant. I think immigration is one of the great things that has made this country the dynamic country that it continues to be, people who are drawn because of the ideals of this country. And so we should not have a debate talking about how we don’t want people to come to this country, but we want them to come here like my grandfather and my father came here.
They made sacrifices. They came in the 1920s. There were no promises. There were no government benefits.
They came because they wanted to be free and they wanted to be good law-abiding citizens. So we have to have a program in place that sets that parameter that says, you’re going to come to this country, come here according to the rules. It’s a very good first step that the first thing you do here is a legal act, not an illegal act.
HARRIS: A quick follow-up, 30 seconds.
So there are 11 million people that — fait accompli. They’re here. What do you do with them if you are able to secure the border?
SANTORUM: Well, I think we can have the discussion, that whether what we do with people, how long they’ve been here, whether they had other types of records. But to have that discussion right now and pull the same trick that was pulled in 1986 — we said, well, we’ll promise to do this if you do that — no more. We are going to secure the border first, and that’s the most important thing to do, then we’ll have the discussion afterwards.