Santorum would veto DREAM Act
Santorum became the second Republican presidential candidate in the running field to say he would veto the DREAM Act immigration bill, which is extremely popular with Latinos. (Flickr: Gage Skidmore)
By JORDAN FABIAN
Channel: Politics
GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum said Sunday that he would veto the DREAM Act and opposes any special pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants currently in the U.S.
Santorum’s statement is his most definitive yet on the DREAM Act. During two separate interviews with Univision News in New Hampshire this month, he said he opposes the legislation, which would provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented children of immigrants who serve in the military or enlist in college. But he had not said whether he would veto the legislation if it reached his desk as president.
Asked whether he would veto the DREAM Act during an interview with Telemundo, Santorum said “Yeah, I would.”
The timing of Santorum’s statement is intriguing, it comes about one week before the Florida Republican presidential primary, the contest that features a critical mass of Latino voters.
The critical mass of Latino Republicans in Florida, Cuban-Americans, don’t prioritize immigration as much as other Latino subgroups. But an overwhelming 90 percent of Florida Latino voters support the DREAM Act, according to a November Univision News/Latino Decision poll.
Santorum, who narrowly won the Iowa caucuses, currently trails Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich in race for the Republican nomination.
Romney has already said he would veto the DREAM Act. Gingrich supports the military aspect of the legislation, but not the college portion. He has not said whether he would veto the bill should it reach his desk as president.
Santorum, who has spoken favorably about his family’s immigrant background on the campaign trail, broadly laid out his approach to the illegal immigration issue, saying that he does not believe that any of the 12 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. should receive a special pathway to citizenship.
“You know we want to be fair, but at the same time, we want to be a country of laws and you can’t … I look at situations in America today where you see heartbreaking situations where a parent will do something and break the law and a family member is greatly disadvantaged from it, whether it is a small child who may have their mom in prison, or their father in prison, or for one reason or another and of course that’s a tragic situation, but the law is the law and we have to have a country that is respecting of all the law and if we don’t then we don’t have much of a country anymore,” he said.
Santorum said that his grandfather came to the U.S. from Italy through legal means and that other immigrants should follow suit.
“He came to this country, he left my dad for five years, my dad didn’t have a dad for much of his early childhood and he did so because America was worth the sacrifice to do it the right way,” he said.
