Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum says it’s time to limit the “chain” of legal immigration into the United States. About one million immigrants are allowed into the country each year and Santorum says once those immigrants become U.S. citizen, they can legally bring in too many extended family members.
“We changed the law in 1990 to allow in folks who are adult children, not just minor children,” Santorum says, “and the parents of the person and the brothers and sisters of the person and their spouses.”
Santorum says it is “pro-American worker” to put new limits on legal immigration.
“All of a sudden from this one person, you have this chain of migration,” Santorum says, “a lot it coming from third world countries that are hostile to the United States.”
Santorum also has proposed reducing the number of H-1B visas granted for highly-skilled immigrants. In addition, Santorum would no longer grant border-crossing passes, a new way of limiting the number of Mexicans who can work in border areas. Santorum spoke this morning at a conservative breakfast club in Urbandale, the final stop on his three-day campaign swing through Iowa.
(Reporting in Urbandale by Iowa Public Radio’s Joyce Russell; additional reporting by Radio Iowa’s O. Kay Henderson)