Mitt Romney Out-Trumps Trump on Immigration

(Bloomberg View) -- A lot of people have short memories when it comes to politics. Politicians often exploit this fact, but sometimes it works against them. That's what happened to Mitt Romney earlier this week.

As part of his campaign for the Senate, he told a Republican group in Provo, Utah, that he was “more of a hawk on immigration than even the president.” As McKay Coppins notes in The Atlantic, the remark came as a rude shock to people who dislike President Donald Trump in important part because he wants tougher laws on immigration and who had thought well of Romney because he refused to endorse Trump in 2016. Utah Republicans have a reputation for being softer on the issue than Trump, adding to the surprise.

It turned out, though, that Romney is still the same man who, during his presidential run in 2012, said that illegal immigrants should be encouraged to go home (“self-deport”) rather than get legal status.

Romney's views were also misunderstood. Some observers took a subsequent statement from the campaign as a retreat from the Provo remarks, but it turned out that he has in fact been taking a consistent position. (Coppins explains the misunderstanding well.)

Untangle the news accounts, and what Romney is saying is that he does not think illegal immigrants, even those who came here as minors, should have been granted legal status. This is the point which he says puts him to the right of Trump: The president says they should have that status, indeed that they should have citizenship. Since President Barack Obama gave them legal status, however, Romney believes that they should be allowed to stay.

Unlike Trump, Romney draws the line at citizenship. He does not think DACA recipients should receive it unless they serve in the military, get a college degree, or otherwise (as he put it in Provo) “do more.”

As tough as Romney's stance may seem, the Utah Republican Party's platform goes further in one respect than he favors. It calls for no longer granting citizenship to the children born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants. Most legal experts believe that would require a constitutional amendment. Romney says that rather than change the Constitution, we should deter illegal immigrants from coming here in the first place.

As that platform suggests, the reputation of Utah Republicans as relatively soft on immigration may be misplaced. If Romney wins his election, as everyone expects, the state's senior senator will be Mike Lee, who voted against offering illegal immigrants legal status in 2013.

Romney's views seem to be considered ones. As a moderate restrictionist on immigration, I largely agree with them. I think he was wrong, though, to oppose granting legal status to people who came here illegally as minors, and is wrong to oppose granting them citizenship now.

If someone is here illegally, but knows no other home than this country and came here through no fault of his own, then we should neither kick them out nor prevent them from becoming full participants in our society. We should not give them a second-class legal status as an incentive for them to serve in uniform or go to college. (And come to think of it, the equation of those two things, a feature of several immigration proposals over the years, is rather obnoxious.)

Flip-flopping is part of Romney's reputation, too, and he is probably not inclined to strengthen it by adjusting his position on this part of the immigration debate. Even so, I wish he would reconsider.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Ramesh Ponnuru is a Bloomberg View columnist. He is a senior editor at National Review, visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and contributor to CBS News.

To contact the author of this story: Ramesh Ponnuru at rponnuru@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Katy Roberts at kroberts29@bloomberg.net.

For more columns from Bloomberg View, visit http://www.bloomberg.com/view.

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.