Mitt Romney got into an interesting exchange with Fox’s Bret Baier on Tuesday about his position on immigration.
Baier inquired about Romney’s attack against Gingrich’s “compassion” moment, saying he wouldn’t favor splitting illegal immigrant families who have been in the country for decades, when Romney himself suggested a similar stance back in 2006-2007. He then told Bloomberg that some illegal immigrants need to be allowed to stay.
Romney, however, rejected the implication that he flipped flopped on that, as well.
If [Gingrich] does what I believe he said he was going to do, allow those people to become citizens, that’s providing for them a form of amnesty. I’ll let him describe his view. My view is straightforward. For those people who came here illegally, they should have the opportunity to get in line with everybody else who wants to come in to this country, but they go to the back of the line and they should be given no special pathway to citizenship or permanent residency merely because they’ve come here illegally.
As Huffington Post’s Elise Foley points out, when Romney says illegal immigrants should register and go to the back of the line, it’s totally fine. Yet when Obama says that, it’s “amnesty.”
