Santorum: GOP needs to alter economic message, limit immigration

Potential 2016 presidential hopeful Rick Santorum told Republicans in Davenport Thursday the party needs to better demonstrate it cares about working Americans, and one of the ways to do it is to limit legal immigrants who he says are holding down wages in the United States.

Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator and winner of the 2012 Iowa Republican caucuses, made a stop at Scott County GOP offices in Davenport to fire up activists in the final days of the midterm elections. He was joined by Republican congressional hopeful Mariannette Miller-Meeks and the GOP's candidate for treasurer, Sam Clovis.

Santorum said unskilled, low-wage immigrants are filling the new jobs in the U.S. and keeping wages down and Democrats who depend upon their votes won't do anything about it.

He said Democrats hurt middle-class Americans with more regulations and taxes but some in the GOP are too focused on keeping labor prices down for corporations by encouraging immigration.

"The object of America is not corporate profits, the object of America is individual Americans, and that's who we should be for," he said.

Republicans who have opposed illegal immigration have often said they're not opposed to legal immigration. It's a phrase Mitt Romney used a lot in 2012.

But Santorum, in a brief interview afterward, said the U.S. already has been generous to immigrants.

"I'm not talking about radical cuts in immigration, but we need to curb it back a little bit and allow the American workforce to begin to profit more from the profits that are being made," he said.