Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), an anti-illegal immigration hardliner who has made headlines for provocative comments on the subject, says he might support some type of legalization measure for undocumented immigrants, given the right conditions. On Thursday, the Iowa representative told the Daily Caller he would "likely" do so "after we restore the rule of law", and pointed to the border as the main front in that restoration. Mother Jones notes that this isn't the first time King has discussed conditions under which he might support what he calls "amnesty" for the undocumented. During a 2010 Tea Party rally in Arizona, King grinned as he told a crowd that he'd gladly make one kind of trade: "For every time we give amnesty to an illegal immigrant, we would just deport a liberal."
This time, though, King spoke more soberly, saying, "I am reluctant to say that amnesty is a possibility because I am not very confident" that border security would ever reach a point he would like to see. "We haven't seen a president that can do this in my adult lifetime."
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At the same Arizona Tea Party rally in which he made the joke about deporting liberals, the Iowa representative recalled telling GOP strategist Karl Rove, "'Karl, if you give me $6 million a mile, there will not be a cockroach [that will] get across my mile. I guarantee it!'" At nearly 2,000 miles long, that would mean about $12 billion put toward border security. The Senate's comprehensive immigration reform bill, which King opposed because of its offer of legal status before the US-Mexico border was deemed secure, allocates some $46 billion to that end. The Senate bill would give the Department of Homeland Security 10 years to achieve 100 percent surveillance of the border and a 90 percent rate of apprehensions of would-be crossers.
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"I think it is a three- to five-year endeavor if we had an honorable president," King told the Daily Caller.
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King didn't offer details on what a secure border might look like, but he did suggest he would support a proposal similar to that of the DREAM Act, which would grant citizenship to young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children. "If all those things [along the border] are working and we get down to the people whose roots go deep, who could clearly prove that they were brought here by their parents without knowledge they were breaking the law or without responsibility - or that particular responsibility - I think we can have that discussion then."
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