Mitt Romney says but doesn't say he will deport DREAM Act kids

Is this how Mitt Romney will keep families together? Speaking in Orlando Thursday afternoon, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney provided a few more details about how he would move on immigration. But he still would not say directly that he would return to deporting young immigrants. That, however, is the obvious implication of his speech.

President Obama announced last Friday that the government would no longer deport undocumented immigrants who came to this country with their parents and have lived here for years. This shields hundreds of thousands of young people from deportation. But Obama noted that the executive order is only a temporary measure, not the needed comprehensive reform that he says Republicans stand in the way of achieving.

Romney has steadfastly refused to say exactly what he would do regarding those young people who, in many cases, do not speak the language of their birthplace and are, except for a piece of paper, Americans. He did make vague comments Thursday about keeping families together, but what he meant by that is unclear. Which is a stance, on nearly every subject, that Romney uses repeatedly.

Some people have asked if I will let stand the President's executive action. The answer is that I will put in place my own long-term solution that will replace and supersede the President's temporary measure.

As President, I won't settle for a stop-gap measure. I will work with Republicans and Democrats to find a long-term solution.  [...]

Our immigration system should help promote strong families, not keep them apart. Our nation benefits when moms and dads and their kids are all living together under the same roof. But, today, too many families are caught in a broken system that costs them time and money and entangles them in red tape. For those seeking to come to America the right way, that kind of bureaucratic nightmare has to end. And we can do this with just a few common-sense reforms.

As President, I will reallocate Green Cards to those seeking to keep their families under one roof. We will exempt from caps the spouses and minor children of legal permanent residents. And we will eliminate other forms of bureaucratic red tape that keep families from being together.

That would help documented workers. But what of undocumented children who have been raised in the United States by undocumented parents? Will they be kept together by being shipped back to their birthplace along with their parents? Is that what he means by keeping families together? Replacing and superseding the president's executive order would seem to say that young people will again be deported.

Certainly, the nation needs an overhaul of its immigration policy. But Romney's continued vagueness in this matter of fundamental justice, his opposition to the DREAM Act, which ought to be utterly uncontroversial, and his failure to put forth anything even slightly innovative, indicates that immigration is not one of his priorities anymore than are the young people who, up until last Friday, were being deported by the tens of thousands each year.