Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) backed calls to eliminate birthright citizenship in a speech Thursday where he expanded on a platform meant to curtail both illegal and legal immigration.
“There is a legal dispute to what the language of the 14th Amendment means — to me it is something that people on both sides of this issue has legitimate arguments,” he said in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington.
“This is one of those situations where the [Supreme] Court must step in.”
{mosads}Santorum said that his immigration plan would “put an end to automatic citizenship for children born here to illegal immigrants,” though he said it is not the most important part of his proposal.
He added that while he’s sympathetic to families that are separated when undocumented parents are taken away from their American citizen children, he compared the issue to parents going to jail after robbing a bank to feed their families.
“The people who brought those children here did so breaking the law with a full understanding,” he said. “Of course I feel bad, we all feel bad, we hope people aren’t in a situation where they have to break the law to make a better life for their family, but that doesn’t obviate the fact that they’ve broken the law and that there are consequences to breaking the law.”
The 14th Amendment, which grants automatic citizenship to anyone born in the U.S. has become a hot-button issue this week in the GOP presidential field after front-runner Donald Trump released an immigration plan that called to end it. The issue has splintered the field, and Democrats have jumped on the issue to criticize vulnerable House Republicans.
Santorum has regularly touted his push to reduce legal immigration by 25 percent by eliminating the visa lottery program and “chain migration,” where those legally in America can petition to bring some members of their extended family to America.
“Immigration can be a good thing, but as with anything, there can be too much of a good thing,” he said.
“This is not anti-immigrant, this is pro-worker, especially those who are most affected by waves of new workers — recent immigrants, minorities and younger workers.”
Other pieces of the plan mirror views supported by a large swath of the GOP field, including strengthening E-verify, ending President Obama’s immigration executive orders and withholding federal funds from sanctuary cities.
Santorum, the runner-up for the 2012 Republican nomination, currently lags in the polls and is likely to head into the second debate in September outside of the top 10. But when asked by National Press Club President John Hughes what it would take for him to drop out of the race, Santorum cracked a joke from an old high court opinion.
“It’s sort of like the Supreme Court when it comes to pornography — you know it when you see it,” he said. “I’ll certainly know if that eventuality ever comes, but I don’t anticipate dealing with that problem.”