L.A. Mayor To Blast Romney On Immigration

Villaraigosa is expected to call Romney’s views “beyond the pale.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa with First Lady Michelle Obama earlier this month. Image by Jae C. Hong / AP

An aide to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa sends over this early excerpt of a speech he is planning to give to the National Association of Latino Elected Officials in Washington, D.C. tomorrow:

For the first time in modern memory, a major political party is poised to nominate a presidential candidate who has abandoned immigration reform and instead advocates self-deportation.

We have a candidate who on Martin Luther King Day, a day celebrating racial reconciliation, had the architect of Arizona and Alabama’s draconian anti-immigration laws campaign for him.

This is beyond the pale.

And we are obligated to say so.

We must defend the tradition of sensible immigration reform…

A tradition that until recently was a bipartisan one that ran from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton to George W. Bush.