Romney softens immigration stance on 'self-deportation' at debate

Mitt Romney continued his march towards a centrist position on immigration during the second presidential debate, presenting a friendly face to undocumented immigrants starkly in contrast to his previous position.

Quizzed about his support for the policy of "self-deportation" that he articulated during the primary season debates between Republicans, he portrayed it as a matter of choice on the part of individuals. "People make their own choice, and if they can't find the job they want, then they'll make a decision to go to a place where they have better opportunities."

But that ignored a crucial aspect of the "self-deportation" policy espoused not just by Romney during the primary season but by his main immigration advisers, notably the Kansas politician Kris Kobach who was the architect of several of the laws clamping down on undocumented immigrants introduced across the US.

As Kobach explained to the Guardian earlier this year, the idea would be to make life so uncomfortable for undocumented Latinos and jobs so hard to find that they would be forced out.

Romney, mindful no doubt of the importance of the Hispanic vote in several crucial battleground status such as Florida and Nevada, also went further than he has before in embracing the idea of offering a pathway to citizenship to undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children. He said that service in the US military would be "one way" that such a pathway would be found – in contrast to previous statements that military service would be the only way residency could be obtained.

Barack Obama did overstep the mark in one regard, however, in that he accused Romney of exhorting Arizona's law clamping down on undocumented Hispanics as a "model for the nation". In fact, during the primary season Romney lauded just one specific part of the Arizona law, SB 1070, called E-Verify – a system that allows employers to check a federal database to see if people applying for work are documented or not.