Immigration News & Opinion
Sat - May 19, 2012

ImmigrationImpact.com, January 26. GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney stole a page from the restrictionists’ playbook this week when he promoted the idea of “self-deportation” during a presidential debate. “If people don’t get work here,” Romney stated, “they’re going to self-deport to a place where they can get work.” Rather than initiate a constructive solution to our nation’s immigration problems, Romney is jumping in bed with immigration restrictionist groups who support policies that tear American families and communities apart, devastate local economies, and place unnecessary burdens on U.S. citizens and lawful immigrants.Romney’s use of the term “self-deportation” is not at all surprising given his recent collaboration with Kris Kobach, the current Secretary of State of Kansas who continues to serve as chief legal counsel to the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), an arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). Kobach, the self-professed author of several state and local immigration-control bills, advised Romney on immigration during his 2008 presidential bid and has long-promoted the strategy of “attrition through enforcement”— the immigration-control strategy to drive away the unauthorized population by making their lives so miserable that they will choose to “deport themselves” rather than remain in the U.S.