Immigration News & Opinion
Sat - May 19, 2012

New York Times, January 24. When Mitt Romney said in the Republican debate on Monday night that he favored 'self-deportation' as a solution to illegal immigration, it seemed to come out of the blue, perhaps an effort, as the race moves to Florida, to soften the hard line he has staked out on immigration. In fact, that position has been advocated for years by restrictionist and conservative groups and is central to tough laws passed in Arizona, Alabama and South Carolina, among other states. Mr. Romney’s embrace of a strategy that would induce illegal immigrants to leave voluntarily places him squarely on the side of groups that want to reduce legal immigration and vigorously oppose any plan to give legal status to illegal immigrants, which they reject as amnesty. The idea arose from a recognition by those groups that no administration was going to conduct mass roundups to deport an estimated 11 million immigrants now living in the United States. Instead, the idea is to make it so difficult for illegal immigrants to live in this country — by denying them work, driver’s licenses and any public benefits and by stepping up enforcement — that they will give up and go home.