Santorum’s surprising call to end chain migration

Clark Coleman forwarded to me Roy Beck’s January 15 e-mail about Rick Santorum’s new immigration stand, along with this note:

Very surprising move by Santorum. After being one of the worst candidates on immigration, he suddenly proposes ending our chain migration system. In other words, he speaks out about reducing LEGAL immigration when no other candidate will ever address anything but illegal immigration, and he has personally had a weak record on immigration, including his votes as a Senator (e.g. he voted against having e-Verify even as an OPTIONAL system for private employers to use).

I’ve copied the Beck e-mail below, trying to keep something resembling his formatting:

From: Roy Beck, President, NumbersUSA

Date: Sunday 15JAN2012 11 p.m. EST

SEN. SANTORUM COMES OUT

AGAINST CHAIN MIGRATION

& VISA LOTTERY

HE SOARS AHEAD OF ALL OTHER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES WITH AN A-minus IMMIGRATION GRADE

Former Sen. Rick Santorum zoomed from the back of the GOP pack on immigration issues to way out FRONT at a C-SPAN televised event in South Carolina on Friday.

For the first time in many years, we have a top-contending Presidential candidate who says LEGAL immigration numbers are too high!

Look at Santorum’s new ratings in 10 categories, plus all his statements that led to those ratings here.

Congratulations to all of you Santorum supporters who have been pushing him to greatly improve his immigration platform. You succeeded beyond most of our wildest dreams.

Now, the rest of you who are supporting other GOP and Democratic candidates need to increase your pressure on them to catch up to Santorum.

Look at the ratings and grades for all the candidates here.

READ ALL THE DETAILS, ANALYSIS AND JOIN THE DISCUSSION ABOUT HOW SANTORUM WENT FROM D-minus TO A-minus IN A RELATIVELY SHORT RESPONSE AT A CANDIDATE FORUM

When Santorum began moving up in the public opinion polls late November and December, we devoted blogs and webcasts to his poor record on immigration that worked out to a D-minus.

Santorum rose to the occasion at the barbeque event Friday for Greenville and Spartanburg Counties, hosted by a couple of South Carolina congressmen.

You can read the details on how he did it here.

SANTORUM SAYS VISA LOTTERY IS ‘SILLY’

For the first time in the year-long Presidential campaign thus far, we have a candidate who has brought up the Visa Lottery and Chain Migration.

Santorum wasn’t asked about them.

No, he was asked other immigration questions and brought up Visa Lottery and Chain Migration on his own!

Santorum said:

“I think legal immigration is a great thing. It has to be a lot more ordered than it is today. And the fact that we have a lottery system for people to come into this country is, in a word, silly. People should not be in a lottery to determine whether they come to this country.”

On Chain Migration, Santorum didn’t define what he means by “immediate family,” which we define as “spouse and minor children.” His lack of detail keeps his rating at a GOOD for now. But we are ecstatic to have the following added to the debate:

“(Immigrants) should come to this country based on a whole bunch of different criteria and one of them should not be chain immigration where relatives come into the country because somebody is here. Immediate family is one thing, but extended family is a very different thing.”

Read his further statements about why overall legal immigration numbers should come down and his statements of support for many kinds of immigration enforcement here.

We’ll be watching Sen. Santorum carefully. His record of promises on these things is recent and somewhat thin. If he begins to back away from any of this, we will immediately start downgrading him.

So, people need to thank him and encourage him to stick to these newly stated positions here.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 21, 2012 12:41 PM | Send