Jeb Bush: I'm not backing down on immigration

“If I go beyond the consideration of running, I’m not backing down from something that is a core belief,” Bush told a gathering of the conservative Club for Growth here in Florida. “Are we supposed to just cower because at the moment people are all upset about something? No way, no how.”…

Seen by a significant number of Republicans as weak on immigration, Bush stressed the toughness of his views. The current immigration system is broken, he said, “because we don’t enforce the law. It’s broken because we have a president that uses authority he doesn’t have to pick and choose who gets to stay and who doesn’t. It’s broken because 40 percent of the illegal immigrants in our country came here legally and overstayed their time. It’s broken because businesses sometimes hire illegal immigrants and they shouldn’t do that and there should be true enforcement so that people know that that’s the wrong thing.”

Bush went on to explain that he would rework the system to decrease family-based chain migration in favor of more economic immigration. And for those already here illegally, Bush outlined a position roughly consistent with other Republican immigration reformers. “My belief is we need to give people a path to legal status,” Bush explained. “You pay your fines, you get provisional work permits, where you come out of the shadows, you pay taxes, you pay fines, you don’t receive government assistance, you learn English, you don’t commit crimes. Any of those things that you do would be a deportable offense.”