Why Rick Santorum is right to target legal immigration

An influx of illegal immigrants is hardly America's only immigration problem

Rick Santorum
(Image credit: (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel))

Republican politicians seldom speak out against illegal immigration without first offering a preamble about the virtues of legal immigration. There's a good reason Republicans usually defend legal immigration while blasting illegal immigration. It takes some of the sting out of the border-security message and makes plain that the issue isn't hostility to immigrants generally or Latinos in particular.

Rick Santorum is adopting a new strategy. And he's right.

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W. James Antle III

W. James Antle III is the politics editor of the Washington Examiner, the former editor of The American Conservative, and author of Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?.