Wisconsin Gov.
Scott Walker pushed back Monday at a Wall Street Journal editorial lambasting his changed opinion on immigration, calling the critique "really wrong on so many different levels."
In an interview Monday with Boston-based radio talk show host
Howie Carr, Walker declared: "My position on immigration is simple."
He said the nation must "secure the border" – and then reiterated his anti-amnesty position.
"No amnesty," he declared. "If you want to be a citizen, that's a whole different thing. You've got to go back to your country of origin and get back in line like anybody else."
As for "legal immigration," he said: "There are restrictions, they just don't make a whole lot of sense."
"Priority number one should be that we're thinking about the impact on American workers," Walker told Carr.
In its weekend
editorial, titled "Scott Walker's Labor Economics," the Journal railed at the Wisconsin governor and possible Republican White House contender for remarks in an interview with
Glenn Beck last week in which he defended his change from pro- to anti-amnesty.
"In terms of legal immigration, how we need to approach that going forward is saying we will make adjustments," Walker told Beck. "The next president and the next Congress need to make decisions about a legal immigration system that's based, first and foremost, on protecting American workers and American wages."
The Journal needled Walker, writing: "The good news is that Scott Walker is looking to advisers to educate him on the issues he will have to address if he wants to be elected President. The bad news is that on the economics of immigration the Wisconsin Governor is listening to Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions."
The WSJ lambasted Sessions, described by the Journal as "the Senate's leading crusader against any immigration, legal and illegal," and took Walker to task for heeding his ideas on immigration policy.
"Republicans used to understand this basic economic principle [more workers can mean more jobs], but the politics of immigration is turning some of them into economists for the AFL-CIO," the Journal writes.
Walker sounded baffled by the Journal's criticism.
Making U.S. workers and their wages a priority is the right approach not just for immigration but for tax policy, entitlement policy, and regulations, he said.
"If we're always thinking of the impact on hard-working Americans, we're going to be fine," he told Carr. "If we don't think about that, then we get bad policies in America."
Conservative media backed Walker in the wake of the Journal editorial, including Fox News' Sean Hannity and radio hosts Mark Levin and Michael Savage, along with commentator Laura Ingraham,
Breitbart News reports.
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