Jeb Bush Opposes Arizona Immigration Law
The Denver Post reports:
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said if his children walked the streets of Phoenix they might look awfully suspicious to police. His wife, Columba, is from Mexico.
Harvard professor Robert Putnam told the same crowd of city officials from across the country at the Denver Convention Center on Saturday that his grandchildren might likewise draw suspicions. His daughter married a Latino man, he said.
"I think it's not right that they could be picked up just because of the way they look," Putnam said.
Bush and Putnam spoke and then fielded questions at a National League of Cities convention about immigration issues, including the controversial Arizona immigration law.
The law aims to detain, prosecute and deport illegal immigrants. The federal government has won an injunction blocking parts of the law, including a section requiring police to question the immigration status of those they suspect are in the country illegally. Arizona has appealed.
A group of conservative lawmakers in Colorado is considering introducing an Arizona- style immigration bill in the legislature in January.
Bush, the brother and son of former Republican presidents, quipped that it was obvious he was not running for office, noting that his views differed from those of most of his Republican colleagues.
While he is sympathetic to the plight of Arizona officials forced to deal with all the problems linked to a porous frontier, he believes there are solutions other than a law criminalizing illegal immigrants, he said.
"It's the wrong approach," he said. "The net result is not much has been done."
