Jeb Bush sends mixed immigration message

Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor and younger brother of former US president George W Bush, has entered the heated debate on US immigration reform but with a decidedly confused message.

In a flurry of media interviews to publicise a new book, Mr Bush said he could support a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million illegal immigrants, including tens of thousands of Irish immigrants, despite saying in the book Immigration Wars that people who came to the US illegally should be barred from getting on a track to becoming citizens.

Mr Bush, who is seen as a possible Republican presidential contender in 2016, has denied he has contradicted himself in what US commentators interpreted as a flip-flop.

The Republican politician said he did not want there to be an incentive for people to come to the US illegally and that the undocumented should face fines or community service for breaching immigration laws and should return home before applying to move to the US legally.

The former Florida governor, who is married to a Mexican immigrant, has stressed he supports a pathway to citizenship for the “undocumented” as well as a less controversial measure of granting citizenship only to legal applicants. “I have supported both a path to legalisation or a path to citizenship with the underlining principle being there should be no incentive for people to come illegally at the expense of coming legally,” he said.

“Today the only path to come to this country other than family reunification is to come illegally. We need to create another category of legal immigration.”

A cross-party group of eight senators have tied plans to create a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants with tighter security on the US-Mexican border, a condition conservative Republicans are insisting on before legislative changes.

Mr Bush’s public pronouncements on immigration, one of the central planks of US president Barack Obama’s second-term legislative agenda, are seen as laying down a marker for a potential presidential bid.