Immigration News Picks, August 28, 2012: Jeb Bush Blasts Party Over Immigration Platform

Romney must campaign to the right of Obama on immigration. (Photo: Flickr/GageSkidmore)

As Mitt Romney prepares for the GOP convention in Tampa where “self deportation” and other strong anti-immigration provisions have made it into the party platform, the former Republican Governor of Florida Jeb Bush has taken a softer stance. During an interview, Sunday, on Meet the Press, Bush said that while using immigration as a wedge issue might be useful politically for Republicans he didn’t think it was “right for the country.”

“We need young, aspirational people to come to our country so that we can grow over a sustained period of time at a high rate that will allow us to create jobs without raising taxes, balance the budget, do all the things that we want to do,” Bush said. “So changing the debate to those issues is, I think, [what] the majority of Americans wants.

Suzy Khimm, blogging at the Washington Post yesterday argued that this year’s tough line against immigration in the Republican party platform was a reaction to President Obama’s own hard line stance. She says that even though the Republicans accuse the president of having “undermined the rule of law at every turn” he has in fact attempted to increase enforcement of laws that target illegal immigration. 

In news unrelated to the Republican party convention, the first Miss Africa Alaska Pageant was held this month at an Anchorage shopping mall. Billed as Anchorage’s first “All-African” event, the Anchorage Daily News reports that the city is now home to thousands of African families including large communities of Sudanese and Somalis driven by refugee resettlement, chain migration and economic opportunity. A Cameroonian who has watched the community grow exponentially over the last decade explains the connection she has to her new home:

Atu-Tetuh grew up in a city that attracted many migrants from villages still tightly tied to the traditions and family of their rural homes. The same was true for Anchorage, she said — people lived in apartment buildings but still considered their true homes to be villages where they hunted and fished on the same land their ancestors had. “To me, it looks like Africa here,” she said.

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