Scott Walker's Immigration Shift at Odds with Koch Group

Wall Street Journal

By Reid Epstein

April 21, 2015

Scott Walker’s Immigration Shift at Odds With Koch Group 

Scott Walker won plaudits from David Koch at a New York fundraiser this week, but the Wisconsin governor now finds himself at odds with the leader of Mr. Koch’s Hispanic outreach organization.

Mr. Koch, one of two billionaire brothers who underwrite a great deal of contemporary Republican politics, heaped praise on the 2016 hopeful at a GOP event Monday in Manhattan. The New York Times reported that he said Mr. Walker, who spoke at the fundraiser, should be the GOP’s presidential nominee. Mr. Koch later issued a statement that he isn’t “endorsing or supporting any candidate for president at this point in time.”

The same day as the fundraiser, however, Mr. Walker appeared to lurch to the right on immigration politics  — calling for new restrictions on legal immigration — during a Monday appearance on Glenn Beck’s radio show. Those comments drew scorn from Daniel Garza, the executive director of the Libre Initiative, the Koch-backed organization that promotes free-market principles to Hispanic audiences.

“Any call, by anyone, to further restrict legal immigration is not a viable, nor an acceptable policy remedy,” Mr. Garza said Tuesday.

In his radio appearance, Mr. Walker appeared to adopt Sen. Jeff Sessions’s (R., Ala.) position that there should be new limits on legal immigration. Mr. Walker said there ought to be “adjustments” to the legal immigration system that protect “American workers and American wages.” In remarks first reported by Breitbart, Mr. Walker vowed to protect American workers from additional legal immigration, and specifically cited Mr. Sessions, who in January released an “immigration handbook” that argued against some legal immigration.

That did not go over well with Mr. Garza, who said Tuesday he is disappointed with Mr. Walker’s latest turn. Mr. Garza said Mr. Walker is in danger of marginalizing himself should he becoming the GOP’s presidential nominee. In 2012, GOP nominee Mitt Romney won just 27% of Hispanic votes after suggesting undocumented immigrants would “self-deport” under his policies.

“I don’t think that any candidate should really speak on the issue in a way that satisfies only one dimension of the American electorate,” Mr. Garza said. “You can’t just have a narrow slice of Americans and cater to a very narrow slice. We’ll continue to coordinate activities with folks who want to align with us on these kinds of remedies.”

Mr. Garza said he met with Mr. Walker in Madison last year, before Mr. Walker renounced his previous support for an immigration policy that included a path to citizenship for the undocumented. Mr. Walker has said he changed his mind after talking with people like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, an opponent of a more inclusive immigration policy. (Mr. Walker last month told a small New Hampshire dinner that he still backed a citizenship path, though he said days later that isn’t his position.)

The Republican National Committee, which in 2013 endorsed comprehensive immigration reform as part of an effort to be more competitive in national elections, declined to make available its deputy political director for Hispanic initiatives, Jennifer Sevilla Korn. Spokesman Sean Spicer said the party doesn’t comment on GOP campaigns.

Mr. Walker is hardly the only leading Republican presidential contender to adopt a more conservative position on immigration policy.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush on Tuesday said he would overturn President Barack Obama’s executive actions that limit deportations of some undocumented immigrants. Mr. Bush, who has been critical of Mr. Obama’s use of executive authority, told radio host Michael Medved that he would repeal Mr. Obama’s deferred action policies, known as DACA and DAPA.

“The DACA and DAPA? Yes I would [repeal them],” Mr. Bush said. “It’s possible that by the time the next president arrives the courts will have overturned those because this concept of prosecutorial discretion, which is what he’s used as the basis for these executive orders, is to look at cases on a case-by-case basis and he’s had millions of people basically by the stroke of a pen be given temporary status. I think the better answer is to fix the immigration problem, to solve it the regular order way, which is to go to Congress, have a proposal, work on a bipartisan fashion to fix a broken immigration system.”

Mr. Bush last month said he still favors a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. He called his position on immigration “the grown-up plan.”

Mr. Walker’s aides said it’s not the first time he’s proposed limiting legal immigration, citing an a Fox News interview with Sean Hannity earlier this month.

“Governor Walker supports American workers’ wages and the U.S. economy and thinks both should be considered when crafting a policy for legal immigration,” Walker spokeswoman AshLee Strong said. “He strongly supports legal immigration, and like many Americans, believes that our economic situation should be considered instead of arbitrary caps on the amount of immigrants that can enter.”

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