CBS News
By Jake Miller
August 10, 2015
Ohio
Gov. John Kasich said Sunday that he backs a path to legal status for
undocumented immigrants in the U.S., stating that many of the roughly 11
million undocumented
immigrants living in America "contribute a lot" to the country.
The
"11 or 12 million who are here, we ought to find out who they are,"
Kasich, a Republican presidential candidate, told CNN. "If they've been
law-abiding over a period
of time, they ought to be legalized, and they ought to be able to stay
here."
He
also called for the completion of a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border,
and the establishment of a guest worker program that would allow
foreign laborers into the country
to meet the needs of businesses.
Kasich
once supported a bill that would eliminate birthright citizenship - citizenship that is automatically granted to babies born in the U.S.,
even if they are born
to undocumented parents - but he backed away from that position on
Sunday, saying, "I don't think we need to go there."
Some
GOP candidates, like South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, have gone a
step further, calling for a path to citizenship - not just residency -
for undocumented immigrants.
"You
would have a long, hard path to citizenship," Graham told USA Today in
May, "but I want to create that path because I don't like the idea of
millions of people living
in America for the rest of their lives being the hired help. That's not
who we are."
Democratic
frontrunner Hillary Clinton has staked out a similar position, arguing
that granting residency but not citizenship to undocumented immigrants
would give them
"second-class status."
Florida
Sen. Marco Rubio, another GOP presidential candidate, co-sponsored a
comprehensive immigration bill in 2013 that included a path to citizenship, but that bill
was stalled by conservative opposition in the House, and Rubio has
since distanced himself from the effort.
Other
GOP candidates like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Ted Cruz, have
struck a more staunchly conservative tone on the issue, refusing any
"amnesty" to people who are
in the U.S. illegally and insisting the focus of any immigration policy
should be on border security and law enforcement.
And
in a class of his own is billionaire businessman Donald Trump, who has
written off many Mexican immigrants as criminals and "rapists" and
called for Mexican government
to pay for the completion of a border fence.
Kasich's
position aims to strike a middle ground amid the crowded spectrum of
GOP opinions on the issue, and it places him on roughly the same ground
as former Florida
Gov. Jeb Bush.
Still,
the Ohio governor hasn't explicitly ruled out a path to citizenship,
suggesting he'd like to keep his options open to ensure more negotiating
freedom. "The debate
is about whether they should become citizens," he told a town hall in
New Hampshire last month. "I wouldn't favor that, but I got to tell you
we got to get this fixed. And if you're gonna get it fixed, you're going
to need Republicans and Democrats. I'm not
taking any options off the table on that issue right now."
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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