I'd like to think this would come back to bite Mr. Romney, but I'm leaning towards the belief that there is very few anti-immigrant sentiments that will ever cause a candidate to be called to the mat by the media (let alone his fellow Republicans, who are beyond hope it seems).
H/T: GFR
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Wow, that was taking his remarks totally out of context.
ReplyDeleteI'm no Romney fan (he's in such a rush to embrace the homophobic wing of the GOP, he didn't notice that the other candidates aren't joining him), but he wasn't saying that there weren't a lot of immigrants in Marshalltown -- he was saying that the immigration system is complicated and difficult, and that this contributes to people's coming here illegally.
Frankly I'm quite happy to see GOP candidates being at least willing to acknowledge that undocumented workers come to the U.S. to, y'know, work; it's a nice break from the usual conservative rhetoric about welfare mothers. Romney said that we need to be realistic about the number of workers our economy needs, and we need to issue visas on that basis instead of coming up with the magic number that Congress thinks the xenophobes won't go nuts over.
The full quote is "you probably don't have a lot of immigrant legally here now, but let me tell you, it's a labyrinth to get here legally."
(Also, the kid in that video was not optimal for explaining why we shouldn't be worried by immigration. Anything that adverts to the United States as "belonging" to Mexicans scares the crap out of conservatives and even some moderates.)