Wednesday, November 07, 2012

The GOP Messed Up on Immigration

On immigration, Mr. Romney erred badly. Immigration, legal or otherwise, just wasn’t an issue over which Reagan lost a lot of sleep (his grandfather snuck into America from Ireland via Canada). Reagan grasped that immigration restrictions are protectionist. Our country is desperate for human capital. We need policies that liberate it and incentivize it. We need every immigrant we can get. Let other countries worry about losing their people. Mr. Romney’s self-deportation scheme seemed a bow to the xenophobic element.

-from an editorial today in the New York Sun.

George W. Bush had it right, but not the political will (or, to be more generous with him, the power) to keep pushing his reform program.  Too bad.  If he had been able to move the GOP tentpegs outward toward those who would do anything to live in our country, we might not have had the result we had on Tuesday.

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