Jeb Bush slammed by asking immigrants to ‘please leave’

Although he gave the speech last Friday in San Francisco, Jeb Bush’s comments at the National Automobile Dealers Association regarding undocumented immigrants are only now becoming public, and Latino advocates aren’t pleased.

The GOP presidential contender addressed the situation with illegal immigrants in America Friday during the course of his address, which political pundits noted was far away from the Steve King clambake taking place over the weekend in Iowa. King is considered one of the most conservative members of Congress when it comes to immigration, and some Latino advocates criticized Republican presidential candidates for attending an all-day long event held on Saturday that was broadcast live on C-SPAN.

The Florida governor is considered to be vulnerable on the issue with base Republican primary voters because of his moderate stance on immigration. But he offended Latino groups by saying that the government should find immigrants without legal status and “politely ask them to leave.”

“First and foremost we need to control our border,” Bush said in the speech given at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. “The 40 percent of the people that have come here illegally came with a legal visa and overstayed their bounds. We ought to be able to figure out where they are and politely ask them to leave.”

“Jeb Bush is apparently putting immigrant and Latino bashing front and center for his presidential campaign. That’s not just anti-Latino, it’s bad politics,” replied Arturo Carmona, director of Presente.org, an online Latino organizing group. “Latinos are more than 10 percent of the electorate, so before Republicans start the tired game of tripping over each other for the best xenophobic slur or statement, we suggest they look at the numbers. Jeb Bush’s statement amounts to nothing more than the failed self-deportation policies presented by the unsuccessful Mitt Romney campaign in 2012. We don’t care how ‘nice’ Republicans say their deportation policies are, the poll numbers show they will face a unified wall of opposition from Latino voters.”

Although Bush softens the comment by saying that undocumented immigrants should be asked “politely” to leave by government officials, the comment does reek of Romney’s remarks at a GOP presidential candidates forum at University of South Florida in Tampa in January of 2012 when he said that illegal immigrants should “self-deport,” a comment that has stuck to him ever since with many Latino voters and certainly with the media.

Much has been made about how poorly Romney did with that demographic in November of 2012, garnering just 27 percent of the vote, according to an analysis of exit polls by the Pew Hispanic Center, a Project of the Pew Research Center.

See Bush’s remarks below.