The Patriot Post® · Carson's Immigration Plan

“Until we seal our borders, everything else is irrelevant. But let’s say we get them sealed, because certainly in a Carson administration that would be done within the first year. You also turn off the spigot that dispenses the goodies, so that people don’t have any incentive to come here. Then those who are here, we have to recognize that we can’t just round them up, but we can give them an opportunity to register. I would give them a six-month period. If they register, and if they have a pristine record, they haven’t been causing problems, I would give them an opportunity to become guest workers — not citizens, not voting people, not people who get goodies. I think that would be a fair way to do it. In terms of them becoming citizens later on down the road if they’ve done things the right way, we the American people will decide what the criteria for that ought to be.”

Mass deportation of 12 million people (or whatever the count of illegals is these days) is certainly impractical, to put it mildly. But Carson’s play here is odd for an outside-the-Beltway frontrunner. H1-B visas in particular are used to displace American workers, and the electoral market these days is demanding a far harder line on immigration than Carson offers here.