Readers: this is cross posted from Potomac Tea Party Report (my other blog).   You may want to check out other posts there over the last few days as they are related to immigration issues.  Keep in mind the post is written for an audience which may not be as savvy as RRW readers on Legal immigration problems and programs.

Yesterday I wrote a post based on a Washington Times story from Thursday that said that the immigration control crowd was forming behind Mitt Romney.  But, all that appears to have changed when Rick Santorum gave a speech on Friday in South Carolina that will change the playing field for many.  Michael Savage, for one, should be pleased that one of the candidates has finally come out forcefully on immigration.

In a press release late last night, NumbersUSA announced that the former Pennsylvania Senator had soared to the top of their Presidential scorecard primarily because he didn’t just stick to the usual talking point—illegal immigration is bad, legal is good—he told people that the numbers are too high.  He took on, without prompting, the Diversity Visa Lottery and chain migration (that is when you get your foot in the door, you can bring a whole host of relatives in with you).

Somalis are a case in point

Not to get too deep into the weeds, but on this business of chain migration, the US State Department in 2008 halted “family reunification” for Somalis (and a few other African groups) when they discovered through some random DNA testing that the would-be family members weren’t family at all.   It is believed that as many as 36,000 Somalis got into the US illegally by claiming family connections.

Diversity visa is insane

Also, I haven’t mentioned it here much (here is one post this past July), but the Diversity Visa Lottery (yes, a real lottery) allows 50,000 immigrants from countries—Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, Bangladesh etc.—that we don’t (supposedly) have enough people from to apply for a lottery to get into the US to increase our diversity.  NumbersUSA has been working with certain members of Congress in recent years to kill the program.

So, here then is what NumbersUSA is saying about Rick Santorum:

Former Sen. Rick Santorum zoomed from the back of the GOP pack on immigration issues to way out FRONT at a C-SPAN televised event in South Carolina on Friday. For the first time in many years,  we have a Presidential candidate who says LEGAL immigration numbers are too high!

[…..]

Congratulations to all of you Santorum supporters who have been pushing him to greatly improve his immigration platform.  You succeeded beyond most of our wildest dreams.

Now, the rest of you who are supporting other GOP and Democratic candidates need to increase your pressure on them to catch up to Santorum.

Roy Beck explains what happened—Santorum from a D- to an A literally overnight:

We have long said that candidates don’t need a long speech or a huge position paper to make it clear to the American public that they think American workers should get the next U.S. jobs, that illegal aliens should not be rewarded with U.S. jobs and that legal immigration categories should be cut if they don’t serve the national interest.

When Santorum began moving up in the public opinion polls late November and December, we devoted blogs and webcasts to his poor record on immigration that worked out to a D-minus.

But we always said that his bad grade was mainly based on bad decisions in the 1990s and on a lack of statements on various categories during the campaign.  We said that it would be easy for him to improve his platform and grade very quickly with a set of new statements and promises.

Here is the clincher.  Santorum went beyond the usual—I oppose illegal immigration—and took it one step further.

But for the first time in the year-long Presidential campaign thus far, we have a candidate who has brought up the Visa Lottery and Chain Migration.

Go to NumbersUSA to see what Santorum said.

I guess we will now be testing the Michael Savage thesis!