As Jeb Bush expanded on his support for a path to citizenship for some immigrants, immigration protesters cut him off with chants of “No hope without our vote!”
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“We don’t need to construct a wall. We don’t need to deport everybody in this country (illegally)”, said Bush. His plan would limit settlement costs when federal agencies are sued by outside groups, a practice environmental groups support and Republicans deride as “sue and settle”.
But even with that moderate tack, Bush’s appearance underscored the increasing tension over the GOP’s outreach to Hispanic voters.
His comments come almost a week after Bush confronted Trump in the CNN debate for invoking Columba on the immigration issue. But in a mavericky move, in the past few weeks Bush has suggested that there’s nearly no difference between him and George W. Bush (though he would try to control the spending of the Republican-controlled Congress).
The Republican presidential candidate quickly chimed in that he believes in a path to citizenship for the young undocumented people known as “dreamers”. “I’ll continue to be consistently for it irrespective of what the political ramifications of that are”.
Trump, the billionaire businessman, has been particularly bombastic on the topic. He’s the son of an unsuccessful, one-term president, and the brother of a failed, two-term president whose errors and incompetence created disastrous messes we’re still cleaning up.
The head of the nation’s largest Hispanic business organization said Monday that U.S. Sen.
“I am exhausted of how we try to figure out ways to break ourselves up in our disparate parts”, added Bush, as he held his hands out wide, rather than wagging his finger.
Though he also spoke about his education platform and his ideas to overhaul the tax code, he focused much of his almost 20-minute speech on immigration.
“As a result, it has become increasingly hard for Americans with less than ideal credit to access capital to start, upgrade, or expand businesses and pursue their ambitions”, his campaign said. Bush framed himself as the one that can forge consensus, while calling out the politics of “striking fear in people’s hearts”.
The speech isn’t the Bush campaign’s only activity this week in Texas.
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Once the protests died down, Bush continued with a jab at Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination, with whom he’s sparred repeatedly over immigration.
