Jeb Bush reaffirmed his support for a legal pathway for undocumented immigrants just as other 2016 Republicans gathered at an event organized by Rep. Steve King, the GOP’s most prominent anti-immigration flamethrower. “We need to find a way, a path to legalized status for those that have come here and have languished in the shadows,” Bush said Friday, speaking at a conference of the country’s autodealers. “There’s no way that they’re going to be deported—no one’s suggesting an organized effort to do that. The cost of that would be extraordinary.”Bush described his broader vision for comprehensive immigration reform, arguing that it’s essential to ensuring the country’s longterm economic growth. “Demography is destiny, and the aging population with fewer workers means fewer growth,” he said, describing how falling fertility rates could slow down the economy in the long term, as they have in other industrialized nations. He added: “Immigrants are engines of economic vitality.
