After releasing a book on immigration that opposes a path to citizenship, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush defended his stance on the Sunday talk shows, claiming that he is on the same page as the eight senators working on bipartisan reform.
“There’s not much light between what we’re suggesting in the book and what is being worked on right now, which is very encouraging,” Bush said in an interview that aired on “Fox News Sunday.”
To stress this “consensus,” Bush talked about legal immigration, not whether illegal immigrants should have to return to their country of origin before applying for citizenship, as Bush calls for in his book.
“The senators are also saying that the path to — for someone outside the country that has patiently been waiting, that they should have a chance to come legally before anybody becomes a citizen that has come here illegally,” Bush said. “And that is the foundation of our idea and that’s where there is a consensus.”
Bush further clarified this in an interview that aired on ABC’s “This Week.”
The basic premise needs to be that coming to the country legally should be easier with less cost than coming to the country illegally. And if you can create a system like that as is being discussed in the Senate and in the House– through a path to citizenship, that’s fine. But my guess is that will take a long, long time to achieve. In the interim, it’s important to take people out from the shadows to allow them to have– the dignity of being– having legal status. In there we agree as well.
