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Most Republicans Won't Touch Citizenship When Addressing Immigration Reform

Most Republicans Won't Address This Subject
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Editor, Latino Voices

FILE - In this Jan. 28, 2013 file photo, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., left, and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., confer during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington. Republican McCain is a walking contradiction, assailing President Barack Obama over Libya and Syria one minute, cooperating with him the next on immigration and the budget. As friend or foe, the five-term Arizona senator _ his partys presidential candidate in 2008 _ is giving Washington whiplash. He insists he's consistent. Whatever the issue, McCain is involved in nearly every hot topic. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
FILE - In this Jan. 28, 2013 file photo, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., left, and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., confer during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington. Republican McCain is a walking contradiction, assailing President Barack Obama over Libya and Syria one minute, cooperating with him the next on immigration and the budget. As friend or foe, the five-term Arizona senator _ his partys presidential candidate in 2008 _ is giving Washington whiplash. He insists he's consistent. Whatever the issue, McCain is involved in nearly every hot topic. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

While a slew of Republican leaders, and now the Republican National Committee itself, have endorsed the idea of reforming U.S. immigration laws, only a handful—Florida Senator Marco Rubio, Arizona Senator John McCain, and now Rand Paul—have said explicitly that by reform, they mean the right eventually to get citizenship.

Conservatives have a tough time talking about citizenship because the party has effectively equated it with so-called amnesty, or a free pass for breaking the law. Amnesty wasn’t always a dirty word. Discussing immigration reform during the 1984 presidential debate, Ronald Reagan said “I believe in amnesty.” By the time the U.S. debated an immigration overhaul again, in 2006, the GOP had undergone a dramatic shift. The number of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. had quadrupled, and any Republican who endorsed some version of a path to citizenship—no matter how onerous—could expect a barrage of attack ads and angry phone calls from members of highly organized anti-immigrant groups.

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