VOTER GUIDE
Now ask yourself if you had any idea where the following presidential candidates stood on immigration and tell me if immigration activists are doing their job.

JEB BUSH
Jeb Bush is what’s known as “a wolf in wolf’s clothing” on immigration. As governor of Florida he aggressively pushed a bill that would allow illegal aliens to obtain driver’s licenses, less than three years after thirteen of nineteen terrorists in the September 11 attack had used Florida driver’s licenses to board the planes.5 (And Jeb is supposed to be “the smart one.”) In 2012, Jeb openly refused to endorse Romney before the Florida primary because of Romney’s opposition to amnesty. He made it well known to the press that he was offended by Romney’s statement that illegal aliens would “self-deport” when the jobs dried up. The day before the primary, Laura Bush showed up in Sarasota, Florida, and announced that both she and George wished Jeb were in the race.6
Demonstrating the Bush family’s uncanny feel for the concerns of ordinary Americans, the next day Romney swept the Florida primary, winning 46 percent of the vote in an eight-person field. He did better among Florida’s Hispanic voters than with Republican voters at large. Throughout the rest of the year, Jeb kept running to the press saying Romney should “tone down his harsh rhetoric on issues like illegal immigration,” as the New York Times admiringly put it. This was fantastically helpful in a close presidential election. About once a month since then, one or another Bush has issued a statement lecturing Republicans about Romney’s “harsh tone” on immigration.7 This always makes the New York Times swoon. Needless to say, the Times could barely contain its esteem for Jeb when, in April 2014, he called illegal immigration “an act of love.”8

RICK PERRY
Texas Governor Rick Perry pushed for Texas’s in-state tuition for illegals and then lectured Republicans about it, saying, “If you say that we should not educate children who’ve come into our state for no other reason than they’ve been brought there by no fault of their own, I don’t think you have a heart.” (Romney’s response: “I think if you’re opposed to illegal immigration, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have a heart, it means that you have a heart and a brain.”)9 Perry opposes E-Verify.10 He also opposes a fence, either on the grounds that he has that witty quip about ladders11 or because “the idea that you’re going to build a wall from Brownsville to El Paso, it’s just—it’s ridiculous on its face.”12 (Wait until Perry hears about the Great Wall of China!) He opposed the Arizona law allowing state officers to check the immigration status of those they detained, as did Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio.13

CHRIS CHRISTIE
Governor Chris Christie was famously duped by Senator Chuck Schumer into supporting comprehensive immigration reform. Schumer considered Christie such a patsy that he immediately leaked the news that he had buffaloed Christie on amnesty in a single thirty-minute phone call. Christie’s Senate appointee then voted for the bill. A few months later, Christie doubled down on amnesty by giving in-state tuition to illegal aliens.

RAND PAUL
Senator Rand Paul calls illegal aliens “undocumented citizens” and has fully banished the word “amnesty” from his vocabulary, using the word “normalize” instead. He even refers to Reagan’s amnesty—which everyone calls “amnesty”—as a time “when we normalized people back in 1986.” Paul frequently cites the imaginary tax boon we’ll get by dumping 30 million poor people on the country.14 He coos to illegal immigrants—or “undocumented citizens”—“We will find a place for you” and “We’re saying you don’t have to go home,” demanding that we acknowledge that “we aren’t going to deport 12 million illegal immigrants.” Instead of a fence, the libertarian wants the government to tell us when the border is secure.
Under pressure from his base, Paul voted against the Schumer-Rubio amnesty, but promptly backtracked. In under a year, Paul was warning conservatives that “the Hispanic community is not going to hear us until we get beyond this [immigration] issue,”15 and cutting ads for the amnesty-supporting Chamber of Commerce.16 He got fantastic press from the New York Times, which was expected, but he also continued to be cited as a true-blue conservative warrior by alleged conservatives. Even after Paul’s about-face on amnesty, Chris Chocola, then-president of the Club for Growth, hailed him as one of the important tea party conservatives who “influenced the rest of them.”17

RICK SANTORUM
In his twelve years in the Senate, Santorum showed no interest in immigration—a point made by his 2006 Democratic opponent Bob Casey when Santorum tried to use illegal immigration as an election issue. (Republicans are fiercely opposed to immigration whenever they need our votes!) Santorum did vote against the 2006 Kennedy-McCain amnesty,18 but he also voted against sanctions on employers who hire illegals—another point made by Casey, who ended up winning the election.19 In his 2012 presidential campaign, Santorum continued to oppose punishing employers who use illegal alien labor.20

TED CRUZ
In September 2012, Senator Ted Cruz told the New York Times, “I have said many times that I want to see common-sense immigration reform pass.” He expressly rejected the idea of self-deportation, saying that “he had never tried to undo the goal of allowing them to stay.” His main interest in immigration, he told the Times, was the “real need for labor” by farmers and ranchers.21 He said he also wanted to change the law so that even more Mexicans and Chinese could immigrate here legally.
Cruz voted against the Rubio amnesty bill, but proposed amendments to it that would double legal immigration from 675,000 to 1.3 million a year and quintuple the number of “high tech” H-1B visas, from 65,000 to 325,000 per year.22 Even Rubio’s bill only increased “high tech” visas—a.k.a. tickets into the country for Lakireddy Bali Reddy’s concubines—to 180,000 a year.23 Cruz also offered an amendment that would theoretically prevent amnestied illegal aliens from ever obtaining citizenship. Most amnesty opponents breathed a sigh of relief when it failed: It would have been overturned by a court in five minutes, but would have made the amnesty bill deceptively attractive.24
After the Schumer-Rubio bill passed, Cruz blasted it as “amnesty”—a word that few other elected Republicans are willing to use under any circumstances. So perhaps, like Governor Scott Walker, Cruz has flip-flopped to America’s side on immigration. Given the likely field of GOP presidential candidates, purer-than-thou conservatives better get ready to do some flip-flopping of their own on flip-flopping candidates.

MITT ROMNEY
As governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney repeatedly vetoed bills giving illegal aliens in-state tuition, and the legislature was never able to override him. He made clear he would also veto any bill allowing driver’s licenses for illegal aliens, so those never made it to his desk. He vetoed a bill to give health coverage to illegal aliens—but the legislature overruled him. About the time Jeb Bush was pressuring the Florida legislature to give illegals driver’s licenses, Romney sought and received a special agreement with federal immigration officials allowing Massachusetts state troopers to arrest illegal aliens.25 Romney was Jan Brewer before Jan Brewer was Jan Brewer.
For this, Romney was unremittingly attacked by Third World–immigration boosters such as Senator Teddy Kennedy and activist Ali Noorani.26 The Democratic attorney general of Massachusetts, Thomas Reilly, called a press conference to denounce Governor Romney as “mean-spirited” for vetoing the bill to give illegals in-state tuition. In response, Romney invited the press to his office and showed them that the proposed reduction in tuition for illegals would cost the state millions of dollars a year.27
Romney is the only serious presidential candidate ever to support E-Verify and a fence on the border—unequivocally. The media, GOP consultants, the big donors, and the Bush family all attacked him for his suggestion that illegal aliens would “self-deport.” Media darling John McCain blustered to the New Yorker that “everybody agrees” that Romney’s “biggest mistake” was to say “quote, self-deport.” Chuckling at the madness of it, McCain said, “I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I heard that, because you can’t have eleven million people self-deport.” How does McCain think they got here?
Despite ferocious blowback and zero support from people allegedly opposed to amnesty, Romney never backed away from his immigration positions, not even after Rupert Murdoch insisted that he change his position in a private meeting a few months before the election.
The point of this exercise is to ask: Why didn’t you know that, reader? Why—to this day—do so many conservatives tout Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz as “bold colors, no pastels” Republicans—especially compared with that miserable establishment RINO, Mitt Romney? Would the NRA hide truthful information about candidates’ positions on guns from their members? Immigration groups do! Numbers USA gave Romney a “C+” on immigration. C+! Anti-immigration websites carped about Romney throughout the campaign. What does he have to do? Build the fence himself?
Fake conservatives and tea partiers followed the crowd and slammed Romney as an “establishment” Republican. Alleged conservative spokesmen put Romney in the same camp as Chris Christie and Jeb Bush. It would be as if gun-rights supporters couldn’t tell the difference between Senator Joni Ernst and Representative Carolyn McCarthy, or pro-lifers described Rick Santorum and Susan Collins in the same breath.