When he was asked about his plan to deal with illegal immigration, Republican front runner Mitt Romney said:
“The answer is self-deportation, which is people decide they can do better by going home because they can’t find work here because they don’t have legal documentation to allow them to work here. And so we’re not going to round people up.
The way that we have in this society is to say, look, people who have come here illegally would, under my plan, be given a transition period and the opportunity during that transition period to work here, but when that transition period was over, they would no longer have the documentation to allow them to work in this country.”
Latino voters facts:
* 21.7m Hispanic are eligible to vote in the US 2012 presidential election
* US Census Bureau estimates Hispanics to be one-third of the US population by 2050
* In California and Texas nearly 40% of the population is Hispanic
* 16% of the US population is Hispanic, but only 10% of voters are Hispanic
* A majority of Latino voters are backing President Barack Obama
* A poll shows that Obama is getting 68% support while Romney got 23%
* The Obama administration has failed to reform the immigration system
* The US Congress unable to agree on amnesty for undocumented migrants
* Most Republicans and some Democrats oppose an amnesty for undocumented migrants
* There are 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US
* More that eight in ten undocumented immigrants are of Hispanic origin
* Most Republican candidates call for tough immigration measures
* Nearly 397,000 people were deported in 2011 by the Obama administration
* Nearly 60% of Latinos disapprove of Obama’s deportation policy
