Amy Taylor of DMIBlog has another rundown of a Republican presidential candidate’s positioning on immigration. This week’s subject is Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, who breaks the mold for conservative candidates when it comes to immigration. Like many other Republicans, Brownback couches his discussion of immigration around border security and has voted repeatedly for increased border patrol forces to stymy terrorism, drug trafficking, and human trafficking. He takes a much more progressive stance when it comes to rewarding undocumented immigrants who are here to work and improve their families’ lives.
On the issue of undocumented immigrants, although he never seems to refer directly to them, he states his support for “providing an opportunity for immigrants with clean records who are employed, learn English, pay fines, and pay back-taxes to assimilate.”
In fact, Brownback broke ranks with his party to support passage of the Senate bill last Spring that was starkly different from the bill that came out of the Republican House. He supported the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act and was purportedly instrumental in getting the bill out of the judiciary committee. At the same time he was intent on moving public jargon away from calling it an “amnesty.”
The Senator stated this month that we have to simplify our immigration laws to make it easier for immigrants to enter legally. He acknowledges that the market demands far more immigrants than our system allows to enter legally and for this reason, reform is vital.
Taylor points out that one of the reason Brownback may be amenable to the rights of immigrants is that he has a nine year-old adopted son from Guatemala.
Also, I did not have a chance to post on it last week, but Amy Taylor analyzed Duncan Hunter’s positioning on immigration. You can read her write up at DMIBlog.
Technorati Tags: DMIBlog, Duncan Hunter, immigration, Amy Taylor, Sam Brownback
1 Response to “Brownback on Immigration”
Something to say?
Hunter and Brownback are basically 100 degrees apart on immigration. Should make some interesting debates to say the least. I wonder if Brownback will be effective in communicating to conservatives some information about immigration that they may not want to hear.
Left by Elana
March 15, 2007 at 11:31am