Jeb: ‘People Born in this Country Ought to Be American Citizens’

Thursday, Republican presidential candidate former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) said,”I think that people born in this country ought to be American citizens.”

Bush said, “This whole immigration debate is hurtful for a lot of people. I’m not talking about my family here I’m talking about in general when you just choose this tidal wave of accusations or bombastic talk. There are a lot of people who share the immigrant experience. When they hear this what they hear is you don’t think I’m part of this, you don’t think I’m part of this country. I know that for a fact because I have hundreds of people that tell me that. I think we need to tone down the rhetoric a little bit, talk about solution, and get on with fixing things in this country, and turn this into a driver for success for our country rather than this defeatist attitude that we now have.”

On if he regrets using the term anchor baby Bush said, “I don’t. No. Do you have a better term?  You give me a better term and I’ll use it. I’m serious … Give me another word … Here’s the deal, what I said was it was commonly referred to as that. That’s what I said. I didn’t use it as my own language. What we ought to do is — you want to get to the policy for a second? I think that people born in this country ought to be American citizens. OK, now we got that over with.”

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