A senior adviser to presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Sunday continued to dodge questions about whether his boss would rescind President Barack Obama’s recently-announced policy to halt deportation proceedings for many young undocumented immigrants. During an interview on CNN, host Candy Crowley asked Ed Gillespie if Romney would dismantle the order and place these young immigrants back in danger of being deported.
“Every executive action that Obama has taken will be subject to review,” Gillespie explained. “In the case of this case, it will be subject to review as to whether or not it’s legal. So, there’s legitimate questions about the legality of it.”
“Isn’t it important, you know, not just for these kids that are involved or these young 20-somethings that are involved that say, ‘Oh, wow, if I meet certain criteria, I can get my working papers.’” Crowley noted. “Come Jan. 20 or the 21st or whenever the inauguration is if Mitt Romney is the president, they could lose that. Shouldn’t there be some certainty, whether it’s immigration or what he wants to cut in order to sustain tax cuts that he wants? … It’s such a simple question, would he keep that in place?”
“We are laying out specifics,” Gillespie insisted. “Between now and November, it’s clear that the Oval Office is an extension of the Chicago [Obama] campaign headquarters, and they’re going to make a lot of political moves. And there are a lot of other target demographics that the president will try to appeal to with executive actions. We’re going to review all of these.”
“But you can’t tell me today whether he would leave that in place?” Crowley pressed.
“All of these are subject to review and repeal,” Gillespie replied.
CBS host Bob Schieffer was first last week to try to cajole an answer out of the candidate himself, asking him about it three times.
“We’ll look at that setting as we reach that,” Romney said. “My anticipation is that I would come into office and say, we need to get this done on a long-term basis, not this kind of stopgap measure.”
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