Jeb Bush had a testy exchange with a self-identified Democrat in New Hampshire who suggested she might be “to the right” of Bush on immigration policy.
The former Florida governor’s support for dovish immigration policies have rankled conservative GOP primary voters. And the issue of illegal immigration was used as a bludgeon by Donald Trump against Bush’s candidacy.
Bush has sought to connect with conservative hardliners on border security while maintaining his support for a path to legal status for illegal immigrants in the United States. When a woman proclaiming to be a Democrat questioned Bush’s immigration positions on Tuesday, things got heated.
“I’m a Democrat and an immigration attorney, I like a lot of what you have to say, I actually might be to the right of you on immigration, and —” a woman began.
“Why’s that?” Bush interjected.
“Because I want to know if you support full-on amnesty because Obama and Clinton are terrible on immigration. Their ideas are dangerous,” the woman said. “And on the other side of the extreme is Donald Trump whose hate and fear-mongering would just desecrate the whole system. My idea is take citizenship off the table for undocumented immigrants because we cannot have a path —” the woman said.
“You’re not to the right of me,” Bush interjected again.
The woman then asked Bush if he supported “full-on amnesty,” and Bush said he did not know what the female questioner meant. Bush told the woman he wrote a book about immigration titled Immigration Wars, and offered to send her the book rather than make her pay $1.99 for it.
“This is something I know something about because I did a lot of research, I’m from Miami, my wife’s from Mexico, she’s an American citizen, kind of embedded in the immigrant community and I’m proud of it,” Bush said. “I think that people ought to come out from the shadows, pay a fine, pay taxes, learn English, don’t receive federal government assistance, no crimes being committed, and over an extended period of time, and I think in the book we were talking about 10 years, you earn legal status.”
When the woman replied that citizenship needed to be taken off the table, Bush interrupted her and exclaimed “earned legal status, not citizenship.” He repeated his point until the woman stopped talking.
“It’s not amnesty,” Bush said. “People in my party, there are a handful of people, that say anything, doing anything is amnesty. Well that’s not amnesty. Ten years to earn legal status. That’s not amnesty. Amnesty is the 1986 law that Ronald Reagan signed.”
Bush, who ranks fifth in the Washington Examiner‘s newest GOP presidential power rankings, polls below four percent in RealClearPolitics’ average of national polls.
