The Wall Street Journal is reporting potential Presidential Candidate Scott Walker told a group of New Hampshire Republicans at a private dinner that he “backed the idea of allowing undocumented immigrants to stay in the country and to eventually become eligible for citizenship.”
This is at odds with Walker’s stance just a few weeks ago when he made what appeared to be a conversion from previously pro-amnesty stances by saying:
I don’t believe in amnesty,” “We need to secure the border. We ultimately need to put in place a system that works — a legal immigration system that works.” “My view has changed,” Walker said in a “Fox News Sunday” interview taped Friday. “I’m flat out saying it.”
Now, in front of a much different audience, the Journal reports:
Mr. Walker’s “no amnesty” position, first articulated earlier this year, was a change from his prior decadelong support for a pathway to citizenship. He has explained in public that his shift to a more restrictive view came after consulting with border-state governors and hearing from people opposed to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
But during the March 13 private dinner, organized by New Hampshire Republican Party Chairwoman Jennifer Horn at the Copper Door Restaurant in Bedford, N.H., Mr. Walker said undocumented immigrants shouldn’t be deported, and he mocked 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s suggestion that they would “self-deport,” according to people who were there.
Instead, they said, Mr. Walker said undocumented immigrants should be allowed to “eventually get their citizenship without being given preferential treatment” ahead of people already in line to obtain citizenship.
Walker’s dancing on the illegal immigrant amnesty issue raises many questions about his supposed conversion.
Walker had been a long standing supporter of amnesty highlighted by
At a 2002 Mexican Independence Day event in Milwaukee, Wis., Mr. Walker, then the county executive, signed a resolution that praised the economic and civic contributions of undocumented immigrants and called for “a new program similar to the Federal amnesty program enacted by Congress in 1986.”
In 2006, he signed another county resolution backing the immigration proposal written by Sens. John McCain (R., Ariz.) and Edward Kennedy (D., Mass.) that would have granted legal status to many illegal immigrants.
As late as 2013, Mr. Walker told Politico he backed a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and told the Wausau Daily Herald more border security wasn’t necessary. “You hear some people talk about border security and a wall and all that,” he told the Wisconsin paper in a videotaped interview. “To me, I don’t know that you need any of that if you had a better, saner way to let people into the country in the first place.”
Immigration patriots already questioned Scott Walker’s seeming battlefield conversion on amnesty. Now, this report raises all kinds of red flags that Walker will give us the rhetoric on opposing amnesty but slyly wink to the establishment GOP bigwigs that he really doesn’t mean it and they’ll be able to count on him to betray the base when necessary.
