Linda Chavez: Conservatives should get behind legalizing immigrants

Jeb Bush’s recent backtracking on the question of whether we should grant legal residency but withhold citizenship to the 11 million illegal immigrants living in the country today is far less Draconian than some advocates for legalization are claiming. It is an idea that has been floated by others who support legalization, including scholar Peter Skerry of Boston College.

As Skerry points out in a recent article for National Affairs, not all immigrants — and certainly not all of those who came here illegally — want to become citizens. In 1986, when Congress granted legal status to approximately three million illegal immigrants living in the country at the time, only 41 percent eventually decided to naturalize.