Scott Walker: I Support a Pathway to Citizenship

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said on Tuesday that he supported a pathway to citizenship for the country’s illegal immigrants. 

In an interview with Wausau Daily Herald, he was asked if he could “envision a world” where 11 million illegal immigrants could “have a path to citizenship.”

The potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate answered, “Sure, yeah. I think it makes sense.”

Walker, criticizing the “band-aid approach” to immigration reform, also said, “Not only do I think they need to fix things for people who are already here, find some way to deal with that, I think there’s got to be a larger way to fix the system in the first place.”

“If people want to come to this country and work hard in America, I don’t care whether they come from Mexico or Canada or Germany or Ireland or South Africa or anywhere else, I want them here,” Walker said. 

The Congressional Budget Office said the Senate’s immigration bill, by awarding more green cards in ten years than the country has in 40 years and not solving the illegal immigration problem, will slash the wages of working class Americans and increase unemployment. 

Walker also said that if the country had a better immigration system, tougher border security measures may not be necessary. 

“You hear some people talk about border security or a wall or all that,” he said. “To me, I don’t know that you need any of that if you had a better, saner way to let people into the country in the first place.”