What's Rand Paul's real position on immigration reform?

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) supports a path to citizenship for immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally. Or maybe it's more of a trail to citizenship, or a sidewalk, or a waterslide.

What Paul has made clear is that he supports some sort of immigration reform. What's not clear is what that position should be called.

Paul tackled immigration reform this week in what was billed as a major speech, saying that he was eager to "become part of the solution." The Associated Press, previewing that speech based on a copy of his prepared remarks, reported that Paul would specifically be "endorsing a pathway to citizenship for the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

That Paul supported the so-called "pathway to citizenship" — a general term for putting undocumented workers already in the country on a track to legal status — immediately sparked reports that he'd broken with much of the GOP on the issue. It also sparked a quick pushback from Paul's office that the senator never actually endorsed that position.

The gripe was one of semantics. In an afternoon conference call with reporters, Paul clarified that while he did believe undocumented immigrants should be offered work visas and allowed to stay in the country, he did not support the creation of a special "pathway" to expedite that process.

"If we get trapped too much in these descriptive terms, whether we're for or against a path to citizenship, I think what we're gonna do is polarize the debate," he reportedly said.

Paul's clarification only left him open to mockery on the right, where amnesty is the descriptor of choice for citizenship schemes. "This is hilarious," says Mark Krikorian at National Review:

Paul tried to walk a fine line, but ended up miscalculating how his speech would be received by the press, writes Dave Weigel at Slate:

After a day of clarifications, most media outlets continued to describe Paul's position as one of support for a pathway to citizenship, noting that even if he disliked the term, it was an apt shorthand for it. The AP updated its original story to reflect the discrepancy in verbiage, but maintained its original assertion. That's because, though Paul remained hesitant to embrace the language, his position sounded remarkably similar to still-developing "pathway" proposals.

From Talking Points Memo 's Benjy Sarlin:

In other words, for all the brouhaha over word choice, Paul has staked out a position to the left of the majority of his party. Though his position differs in some ways from other immigration reform proposals, his remarks and subsequent clarifications reveal that he's at least open to some sort of pathway, in substance if not in name.