Jeb Bush went on Telemundo for his first Spanish-language interview as a presidential candidate, telling anchor José Díaz-Balart that coming to the United States legally “has to be easier than coming here illegally.”
“For the 11 million people [here illegally], they must come out of the shadows, receive a work visa, start paying taxes and also pay a small fine, learn English, don’t receive government benefits, but they come out of the shadows and they receive legal status after some time,” Bush said.
On Donald Trump’s comments regarding some of those crossing illegally being drug dealers and rapists, Bush said, “I was hurt hearing somebody speaking in such a vulgar fashion.”
“This makes the solving of this problem much more difficult when we have politicians talking like that,” he said. “Besides that, he was offending millions of people that are here legally. It makes no sense. In a political sense, it’s bad and it creates an environment that is worse.”
Bush also talked about his Mexico-born wife, Columba, and their family, noting that George P. Bush was teased as a child for his brown skin.
“At one point, I had to describe, or tell him that people like him aren’t the majority. You need to accept it, but move on. Because he was really annoyed because he and his friends — we don’t have that problem in Miami, but in other parts of the country, yes. It was a good lesson to remember that we still don’t have a country of complete justice. You can see it in African-American communities too, that there’s still discrimination. But in my life, it’s important to remember that,” Bush said.
His family, Bush noted, is “very Hispanic, in that we speak Spanish in the house.”
“Columba is a good Mexican, proud of her citizenship of this country, of course, but we eat Mexican food in the home. My children are Hispanic in many aspects,” the former Florida governor said. “We don’t talk about it, but the Hispanic influence is an important part of my life.”
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