As many of you recall, last week President Obama announced that the Department of Homeland Security was halting deportations for up to 800,000 illegal immigrants who entered the country as children. The decision does not grant legal status to children who have completed high school and either served in the military or attended college. However, it does halt any deportation proceedings for two years and allows them the opportunity to apply for a work permit.
Since that time, Mitt Romney has stubbornly refused to state what, if anything, he would do to this directive were he elected in November.
All that seems to have come tumbling down around Romney today. Ray Walser, co-chairman of Romney’s Latin American Working Group, speaking about Mitt Romney stated to the Daily Telegraph that
My anticipation is that he would probably rescind this directive were he to be elected in November.”
A veteran U.S. diplomat and senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, Mr. Walser went on to add that such a decision would be consistent with the “very tough” stance Mitt Romney has taken regarding illegal immigration to date.
Romney has already pledged to veto the more comprehensive Dream Act which would give young undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship and has stated his hope that illegal immigrants would “self-deport” themselves.
This revelation by Mr. Walser is all the more significant as there are an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants currently in the United States and the Obama administrations directive is believed to benefit about 800,000 young immigrants at a time when the President already leads Mitt Romney among Latino voter by more than 30 percentage points according to recent polling.
So far the Romney campaign has refused to answer any requests for comments but Mr. Walser contacted the Daily Telegraph , telling them that he had been asked to disassociate his comments from Mitt Romney:
I’ve now had a little conversation with people from the campaign and they are concerned that I was not speaking in an authoritative voice. They would really prefer that if you’re going to quote the Romney position, you get it from someone other than me.”
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