Many candidates (Bush, Rubio and Paul, to name just a few) are talking about the need for Republicans to reach out to Hispanics if they want to win in 2016, but one candidate seems to be making a special effort lately. The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials is meeting this week, and featuring several Democratic candidates. The only Republican on their roster, however, was Ben Carson. In his remarks, Carson called for a tightening of US border policies, but also endorsed a guest worker program for Hispanics already in the country:
“The reason I think we need to seal our borders completely, all of our borders—north, south, east, west—is not so much because I’m afraid of somebody in Honduras,” Carson said, but because “I’m afraid of someone from Syria that wants to bomb us and wants to do bad things.”
Carson also addressed the millions of undocumented immigrants residing in the United States, saying they should not “hide in the shadows” and instead be given an opportunity to be guest workers.
Carson should be commended for endorsing a path to legal status for guest workers. This is a common sense approach that has been endorsed by the majority of the Republican candidates, and Carson is greatly helping his own prospects, as well as the party’s, by embracing the principles of security and market-based reform.
Nick Arnold is a researcher for American Principles in Action.
