The former secretary of Commerce and CEO of Kellogg Company, Carlow Gutierrez, says the problem with America's immigration system is that "we don't have enough immigrants coming in."
The Republican, who now serves as co-chair of the Albright Stonebridge Group, argued America's immigration laws broken, but not in the way other Republicans allege.
"The reason we have undocumented workers is because our laws do not serve our economy," Gutierrez said on CNN Sunday's State of the Union. "And that is the problem. And unless Congress acts and the executive branch acts, our laws don’t work."
"We need a million people in farming," he said as an example of the apparent labor shortage.
Gutierrez was debating the former Republican presidential candidate, Rick Santorum, who expressed support for President Trump repealing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.
The full exchange is below:
SANTORUM: "What would be leadership is the president enforcing the law instead of the president seeing himself above the law. We had a president in the past, the last president, to do that on a routine basis. This president hopefully will obey the law. If the president wants to put forward an option to go to the Congress to fix this, as I will remind my Democratic colleagues here, President Obama had a Democratic Congress --"
GUTIERREZ: "One Republican."
SANTORUM: "— and — well, I’m talking to these two. And my Democratic colleagues that the president had — President Obama had two years. We had complete control of the House and Senate and didn’t move any DACA — he didn’t move anything. So the idea that there is now this outrage that Republicans are not cooperating, you know what the deal has always been. Border security first. Republicans have said that from the very beginning. We have not --"
(CROSSTALK)
SANTORUM: "We need to get --"
(CROSSTALK)
BASH: "In fairness --"
(CROSSTALK)
BASH: "— in fairness, Democrats and Republicans tried to get the Dream Act through --"
GUTIERREZ: "It --"
BASH: "— and it didn’t work."
GUTIERREZ: "That’s right."
BASH: "But that’s --"
(CROSSTALK)
SANTORUM: "Not when it doesn’t (INAUDIBLE) --"
GUTIERREZ: "Rick --"
SANTORUM: "When the president had control --"
(CROSSTALK)
SANTORUM: "— and when Democrats controlled it in 2009 and 2010, the president did nothing on this issue."
GUTIERREZ: "But there’s one simple — but — neither did other presidents. There’s one simple --"
SANTORUM: "It doesn’t matter. We didn’t have control. They had control."
GUTIERREZ: "There’s one simple --"
SANTORUM: "President Bush never had control."
GUTIERREZ: "— there’s one simple insight here."
SANTORUM: "President Obama had control --"
TANDEN: "He was trying to get --"
(CROSSTALK)
GUTIERREZ: "There’s one simple insight here."
SANTORUM: "— did nothing."
GUTIERREZ: "The reason we have undocumented workers is because our laws do not serve our economy. And that is the problem. And unless Congress acts and the executive branch acts, our laws don’t work. We need a million people in farming --"
SANTORUM: "We don’t enforce our laws."
TANDEN: "This is — OK. But we’re --"
(CROSSTALK)
GUTIERREZ: "Our laws don’t work. We don’t have enough immigrants coming in."