The influential president of Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist, said on Friday that Republicans should embrace the immigration-reform proposals being floated by Democrats.
“We are the pro-immigrant party, not the anti-immigrant party,” Norquist told the National Journal. “And the conservative free-market movement, the religious right people, the business guys, the law-enforcement guys, we all want more legal immigration. So it’s sound, right of center. It’s Ronald Reagan.”
President Barack Obama, for instance, has called for a path to citizenship for undocumented workers and a full revamping of the system such that illegal immigration becomes unattractive to foreigners.
Norquist has long argued that the Republicans will benefit most from a comprehensive immigration policy – saying during the Bush administration, for instance, that Hispanics would be alienated if the GOP continued to resist a more open system.
“This is where we should have been all the time,” Norquist told the National Journal. “We are washing our face, and it’s the same face and it got dirty. You’re not changing the face. You’re washing the stuff off that didn’t belong there.”
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