Former U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and other Republican leaders are creating a super-political action committee to push for immigration reform and improve the party’s standing among Hispanics, a group that helped President Barack Obama win re-election.
“We want to see a path, a process for legalization of workers who are here undocumented,” Gutierrez said, according to a transcript of an interview taped for CNN’s Sunday morning television show “State of the Union” to be aired Nov. 18.
The super-PAC, called Republicans for Immigration Reform, will seek to attract “all Republicans who believe in immigration reform and immigration,” Gutierrez said.
Gutierrez, a Cuban immigrant who headed the Commerce Department under President George W. Bush, is setting up the super-PAC with Charles Spies, founder of Restore Our Future, a super-PAC that supported Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
During a Republican primary debate, Romney called for the “self-deportation” of Hispanics here illegally. He collected only 27 percent of the fast-growing Hispanic vote in losing to Obama in the Nov. 6 election.
Romney lost because “the far right of this party has taken the party to a place that it doesn’t belong,” Gutierrez said. “We are the party of prosperity, of growth, of tolerance.”