Romney takes beating on immigration as Supreme Court hears Arizona challenge

As the U.S. Supreme Court finally takes up a lawsuit over Arizona’s restrictive immigration law, there are some leading immigration reform activists who are calling Mitt Romney’s stated position of supporting policies that encourage “self-deportation” nothing more than “fantasy.”

Romney has previously called Arizona’s immigration policies “a model” for the country, and said he favors the state’s law because it provides incentive for “self-deportation” by making life for undocumented immigrants more miserable than it was in their country of origin.

While the Romney campaign has since clarified that he did not call the law itself a “model” but was instead endorsing the state’s electronic citizenship verification system, his carefully worded positions on how to deal with undocumented immigrants have not sat well with leading advocates. Throughout his campaign, Romney has repeatedly advocated Arizona’s verification system, but when he speaks about the subject he always neglects to note that a virtually identical system is already in place nationally.