Republican presidential candidate and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush stood by calling illegal immigration an “act of love” and his support for earned legal status at Thursday’s primetime GOP presidential debate. Jeb was asked if he stood by his comment and support for earned legal status. He answered, “I do. I believe that the great majority of people coming here illegally have no other option. They want to provide for their family. But we need to control our border. It’s not — it’s our responsibility to pick and choose who comes in. So, I’ve written a book about this, and yes this week, I did come up with a comprehensive strategy that really mirrored what we said in the book, which is we need to deal with E-Verify, we need to deal with people that come with a legal visa and overstay, we need to be much more strategic on how we deal with border enforcement border security, we need to eliminate the sanctuary cities in this country. It is ridiculous and tragic that people are dying because of the fact that local governments are not following the federal law. There’s much to do. And I think rather than talking about this as a wedge issue, which Barack Obama has done now for six long years, the next president, and I hope to be that president, will fix this once and for all, so that we can turn this into a driver for high sustained economic growth. And there should be a path to earned legal status for those that here. Not amnesty, earned legal status, which means you pay a fine, and do many things over an extended period of time.”
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