In the same interview where Jeb Bush echoed his brother on Iraq, he also took a very similar line on immigration. With Scott Walker going in exactly the opposite direction, expect this to be a hotly contested issue in the Republican primaries.
If there is one person who can make the former Florida governor look more conservative on immigration, it is Hillary Clinton. Bush wants to pass comprehensive immigration reform through Congress; Clinton wants to go further than Barack Obama on executive action. Bush wants some kind of legal status for illegal immigrants already in the United States; Clinton says nothing less than a full path to citizenship will do.
Clinton has left so much room to her right on immigration, Bush can easily get there without modifying his current position. The hope is that the 2016 Republican presidential nominee can avoid being painted as anti-immigrant or anti-Hispanic without being joined at the hip with Hillary on immigration.
But there is also a danger to this approach, without even delving into whether it would be good policy. On immigration, some Republicans want to have their cake and eat it too — cheap labor si, likely Democratic voters no. The message they can send Latinos and other voters is that the GOP is happy to let immigrants work in the United States, but not be full participants in American society.
Clinton sees this vulnerability and intends to exploit it. “This is where I differ with everybody on the Republican side,” she said in her recent immigration speech. “Make no mistake, not a single Republican candidate, announced or potential, is clearly and consistently supporting a path to citizenship. When they talk about legal status, that is code for second-class status.”
As it happens, there are immigrants who are primarily interested in working in the United States. Less than half of the illegal immigrants who were legalized under the 1986 amnesty were U.S. citizens as of 2013. As of 2009, that included 46 percent of the people legalized because they’d come to America before 1982 and only 28 percent of the seasonal agricultural workers.
Combine this with relative Republican enthusiasm for highly employer-dependent guest-worker programs, however, and you can see how the Democrats can try to make even the Bush position on immigration seem unwelcoming. At the very least, she can try to coax Republicans into an immigration bidding war they are unlikely to win.
