New York Times
By Julia Preston
June 13, 2013
The former governors Jeb Bush of Florida and Haley Barbour of Mississippi, two of the Republican Party’s most outspoken advocates of overhauling the nation’s immigration laws, urged conservatives on Thursday to “change the conversation” on immigration by arguing that immigrant workers, both high-skilled and low-wage, are essential for economic growth.
In a moderated discussion before reporters at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a nonprofit research group, both Republicans said they generally supported a bill under debate in the Senate and were guardedly optimistic that overhaul legislation would pass Congress this year.
Their comments highlighted the rift among conservatives over the bill, which includes a pathway to citizenship for 11 million immigrants here illegally. Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a Republican who is a leading opponent of the measure, said this week on the Senate floor that it would bring an influx of foreign workers that “would be disastrous for the wages and job prospects of U.S. workers.”
Mr. Bush, the son and brother of former presidents who is the perennial subject of speculation about his own White House aspirations, said he was advising Republican lawmakers to shift from a focus on illegal immigration to emphasize “how do you create a strategy of sustained economic growth.” Both men said the economy would need foreign workers to replace and sustain an aging American labor force.
“That is a winning conversation in conservative America for sure,” Mr. Bush said.
Mr. Bush said he agreed with the 13-year pathway to citizenship in the Senate bill, which includes requirements to learn English and to pay back taxes and fines, saying it “reaches the proper balance” between the rule of law and the nation’s immigrant heritage. Mr. Bush, in a book he published this year, had raised doubts on his views of citizenship for those immigrants.
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