Posted on 08/20/2015 2:58:34 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum isn't just the latest 2016 Republican presidential candidate to call for ending birthright citizenship, joining Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz and Gov. Scott Walker -- he wants credit for being the first to push overall immigration reform.
"I am not new to this debate," Santorum said, noting that he had authored border security legislation almost a decade ago when he was in the Senate. "...Up until a few days ago, I was the only candidate in this race who put forth a legal and illegal immigration proposal that puts American workers first."
Santorum rolled out the specific details of his proposed immigration policy on Thursday at the National Press Club in Washington.
Ending birthright citizenship is not his highest priority, he said, but it is a consequence of breaking the law even though it may mean breaking up families. Santorum, who has seven children, has long touted his image as a family man.
"We're not separating them arbitrarily," he said. "We're separating them because they did something and put themselves in a position to jeopardize that relationship with their children."
With more visible GOP candidates calling for the same reforms he's supported in the past, Santorum's message was clear.
"This summer, I was joined by Gov. Walker, who was first to change his position with a few specifics called for limiting legal immigration," Santorum said. "Now Donald Trump has joined a majority of Americans, and me, with some ideas on how to put America's workers first."
Santorum said he would build "hundreds of miles of new walls" along the U.S.-Mexico border, as have other candidates, he specified that he wants the American workers to build those walls, unlike Trump, who called for the Mexican government to foot the bill.
Visa overstays, Santorum said, are one of the largest contributing factors to numbers of illegal immigrants. By enforcing a biometric tracking system for every immigrant, Santorum said, he would "track who is here and who has overstayed."
Eliminating the visa lottery and chain migration to reduce the rate of legal immigration to the U.S. were part of Santorum's plan, as well as using e-verify to check the status of employee citizenship and ending amnesty.
"Amnesty will make competition more fierce, not less; encourage more immigration, not less; and further depress wages," he said.
Santorum also said he would eliminate "sanctuary cities," which have policies to shelter illegal immigrants, by withholding federal funds from them.
In a CNN poll of 1,000 Americans conducted Aug. 13-16, only 1 percent of Republicans said they want him to win the GOP presidential nomination.
You are weird. Why don’t you wake up and think for a change. You donate $100k to a candidate, then you are repping the person who just ended his campaign?
Those are good ideas of his. We don't need more third world immigrants, legal or illegal.
That said, Santorum is the wrong candidate. When was the last time he won an election?
You think that “bundling” means that I took one hundred thousand dollars from my own pocket and gave it to the campaign? Now I think I’m seeing the problem. You know very little about politics, yet you constantly post on a conservative political forum. And Trump has not “ended” Cruz’s campaign. Cruz has gone UP in the polls since Trump entered the race. Go to any polling website and take a look.
Rich who?
“Who”
He’s the weirdo who had family pictures with his stillborn baby.
Rick Santorum, the Harold Stassen of 2015.
Rick was on Hannity radio today bashing Cruz on immigration. He will be on Levin’s radio show later tonight.
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Santorum: “I am not new to this debate,”
LOL..... Sianttorum isn’t even in the debate.
Go find a real job, Sweater Boy....
Yeah, I understand that Trump does seem to vary on the specifics of his positions fairly frequently, and I do find that troubling, and I have commented that he will take 5 different positions on the same issue within the same sentence.
But something that counter balances that trait of his for me is his trait of being a very candid an open speaker who does not use prepared lines or practiced answer and speeches focus grouped for maximum effect and such.
He’s a real guy speaking in normal language, and that is truly interesting and rare in my estimation.
Sometimes it doesn’t work to his advantage when he appears to contradict himself, but other times it does work to his advantage, because he connects with real people, and lots of them.
He is a unique individual, he has gravitas, if I may use that bit of an infamous word.
I do not think it is a wise thing to do to dismiss him.
I mean, Nick, I dismissed him straight off when he announced, just NAH, and I made jokes about him.
Now I am listening to what he says and trying to figure out if this is a man I can vote for.
He is so far effectively selling himself to me, I have to be honest about it.
I kind of see it the opposite way. Everything he says is calculated to provoke reaction. We never get to see the real Trump. And anyone who overcompensates to the degree he does is hiding deep-seated insecurities. I'd hate to be him, he must live in anguish.
Hes a real guy speaking in normal language, and that is truly interesting and rare in my estimation.
Again, I don't understand what you are saying. I can't think of a straight male I know who talk like him. He's constantly in the state of a teenage drama queen. He was good at reality TV, I guess, because he has the persona of a diva who must be enveloped in drama and feuds. I don't think it's an attractive quality in women, but in a mam it's just brutal.
What did dweeb Rick say about Cruz? Rick is going nowhere fast.
I don’t think he calculates anything he says before he says it.
He just sort of basically fires from the hip.
A person who calculates everything they say before they say it is Hillary Clinton.
She is completely contrived in everything she says, does, even her mannerism are practiced and false.
Trump is the exact opposite of that. He is unpracticed, unfiltered and raw.
I don’t know for a fact if he is telling me the truth or not. He might not be.
I do know for a fact that the GOP is not telling me the truth though.
I’d trust Trump long before I’d just any of the usual suspect GOP candidates.
-PJ
Santorum a good guy. He just needs to realize he has no chance. He should back Cruz or TRUMP.
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