What the Immigration Debate Means for the White House Race

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Immigration reform is one of the biggest issues of this year’s presidential race, and every contender has their own take. Judy Woodruff talks to Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, Frank Sharry of America’s Voice and Brittney Parker of the Commonwealth Foundation for more on where the candidates stand on the issue and the role of Latino voters in this election.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Let’s talk about the Republican candidates for president. What are they saying? How are they differing? At this point, it’s — you have got Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and John Kasich. How do they differ on the subject of immigration?

MARK KRIKORIAN: There’s actually a pretty wide range between them.

Kasich is actually probably much closer to the Democratic candidates, wants to amnesty illegal immigrants and increase immigration. Ted Cruz is actually, in a sense, kind of in between, because Trump has said in his published platform he wants to reduce immigration, among other things.

I’m not sure he’s read his own platform, but at least that’s what it says in print. Cruz is kind of in the middle. He’s called for no increases in immigration, reforms in certain programs, toughening of enforcement. So, there is actually a pretty entered range, whereas, on the Democratic side, the two candidates pretty much agree on everything.

WOODRUFF: Brittney Parker, how do you see the Republican candidates on immigration?

BRITTNEY PARKER: Well, the thing is that, unfortunately for Kasich, who is probably most in line with the majority of Republican primary voters, despite what Trump would say, is not many people know what Kasich’s immigration platform is. He just doesn’t capture the headlines the way that Cruz or Trump does.

Cruz, much more in between the two candidates — I agree with Mark on that — but increasingly moving to more hard-line immigration stance, especially compared to where he used to be just a few years ago.

WOODRUFF: Well, Frank Sharry, as somebody who is coming at this from the other side of the political spectrum, how do you see voters so far in these Republican primaries responding to these candidates?

FRANK SHARRY: Look, the animating issue in the immigration debate right now is what to do about 11 million undocumented immigrants who live and work in America.

Trump has gone far beyond anything we have seen, and by saying that he’s going to round up and deport people within 18 to 24 months, a remarkable thing. The wall gets a lot of attention, but the idea that we would have that kind of mass roundup of people who are settled in America, it would be one of the most outrageous human rights violations in the modern world.

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