Romney won't deport people... if they've paid to stay

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Mitt Romney generally avoids having to take a firm position on anything, preferring to campaign on a platform of anti-Obama lies and smears, but after a lot of hapless dithering (refusing to take a position because, whatever his real views, assuming he actually has any, he didn't want to upset pretty much the entirety of his anti-immigrant party) he finally took a position yesterday on President Obama's decision to stop deporting undocumented immigrants who came to America as children with their parents:

Young illegal immigrants who receive temporary work permits to stay in the United States under an executive order issued by President Barack Obama would not be deported under a Mitt Romney administration, the GOP presidential hopeful told The Denver Post Monday.

"The people who have received the special visa that the president has put in place, which is a two-year visa, should expect that the visa would continue to be valid. I'm not going to take something that they've purchased," Romney said. "Before those visas have expired we will have the full immigration reform plan that I've proposed."

And why shouldn't they be deported?

Is it that these people are, for all intents and purposes, American?

Is it that there's actually a speck of compassion and understanding lodged deep in whatever is left of his soul?

No, it's that they paid money to stay (and that he's making another last-ditch attempt to win a bit more of the Latino vote, which of course is heavily pro-Obama, for many and obvious reasons).

As New York's Dan Amira writes, noting that it took Romney a whole 108 days to state his position:

Romney's explanation here seems carefully calculated to soften the blow with his GOP base: He'd keep the policy in place, but not because of sympathy for people who were brought here illegally as kids by their parents, grew up as Americans, and now know the United States as home, but because they had to pay a $465 fee with their application for "deferred action," and reneging on that would just not be right.

What a wonderful guy.