Romney promotes gradual attrition of illegal aliens through active enforcement

Former Massachusetts Governor and Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has advocated a policy of attrition to deal with the millions of illegal immigrants who are currently in the United States. In such a process, illegals would slowly be repatriated to their native countries through active enforcement of current law.

Romney emphasized that he has no desire to deport illegal immigrants to their native countries en masse. The attrition process, he said, would "take people who are working here today and replace them gradually and humanely with our own citizens as well as with legal immigrants."

The candidate dismissed assertions of proponents of the proposed Senate amnesty bill that solving the immigration crisis requires a delicately balanced coalition. "This is not rocket science," Romney said. "Getting the Iranians to not build a nuclear bomb? That's hard. Stopping the jihad? That's hard. But enforcing our border is relatively easy, relative to those things."

Romney said the illegal immigration crisis dates back to a series of failures of the Bush administration, prior administrations and Congress to face up to the challenge. "They just have not been willing to do what's necessary to end illegal immigration," he said.