Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) warned on Sunday that if his party continues to embrace the anti-immigration reform strategies articulated by 2012 nominee Mitt Romney, they will again lost in the 2016 presidential campaign. The GOP presidential hopeful reaffirmed his support for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and slammed some of his fellow candidates whose want to curtail even legal immigration.
On CBS’s Face the Nation, host John Dickerson asked Graham about his recent appearance at Romney’s E2 Summit in Utah and Romney’s 2012 proposal to encourage undocumented immigrants to “self-deport” by making their lives miserable (a strategy long pushed by anti-immigrant groups who believe denying undocumented immigrants of all services and jobs will make them voluntarily leave the United States).
Graham noted that Romney and his wife had done the GOP “a great service by admitting that embracing self-deportation in 2012 was their biggest mistake.” Romney said in March that his biggest mistake was poorly “communicating to Hispanic voters and minority voters generally why it is that conservative principles are better for them and their families than those that are being promoted by the liberals, by the Democrats.”
Graham then urged “every candidate on Republican side” to “admit it was a mistake to embrace self-deportation.”
“I hope self-deportation is in our rear view mirror, as a party, because, if it is not, we will lose in 2016,” he added.
Asked if any Republicans are making that case, he noted that he is the sole GOP candidate supporting a “a comprehensive approach that includes a long, hard, earned pathway to citizenship.” Moreover, he observed, “there are some people saying you need to limit legal immigration” — a position he said shows those candidates are “looking at a different world than I am.”
Graham also made an economic argument for using immigration to expand the U.S. workforce: “We’ll be down to two workers for every retiree in the next 20 years. We’re going to need more legal immigration.”
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While some other 2016 Republican prospects have previously embraced comprehensive reform with a path to citizenship, announced and likely presidential candidates including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, and Wisconsin Scott Walker have all backed off of their earlier positions. On Sunday, Christie said on ABC’s This Week that “circumstances on the ground have changed” in the five years since he called for a path to citizenship.