Republican Senator Rand Paul Encourages Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Leading Republican and US senator Rand Paul has embraced comprehensive immigration reform, which carries a pathway to citizenship for undocumented individuals.

Rand Paul, who as a freshman senator is reportedly in the run for 2016 presidency, made a speech to the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday of this week during which he ridiculed the notion of deporting 11 million undocumented foreigners - many of whom have lived for decades in the US and have raised families there.

With his speech interspersed with Spanish, Mr Paul said that he would offer legislation which would put a probation period in place for those residing illegally in the United States.

He said that somewhere along the line, Republicans had failed to understand and articulate that immigrants were an asset to America, not a liability.

Following his speech, Mr Paul was questioned as to whether this probation period would lead to citizenship.

Mr Paul did not specify a positive or negative on the matter, but described a process by which undocumented foreigners would ultimately become Americans. His outlined that his goal was to ‘normalise’ this large minority step-by-step, granting them working visas following annual reviews of border security becoming approved by Congress.

Mr Paul described the next stage in the process as getting ‘in line to come into the country which is how you become a citizen, like anybody else. But you wouldn’t go to the front of that line and you wouldn’t have to leave the country.’

Bipartisan Senate groups and Representatives from the White House seem to be moving slowly towards a route for legalising illegal immigrants; however they shy away from the Democratic terminology “a pathway to citizenship”, despite often supporting the end goals this elicits.