He said, during a discussion with Univision, that it was "ridiculous" to think that DREAMers, children brought to the U.S. by their parents illegally, shouldn't have an "accelerated path" to citizenship.
Then, the former Florida governor was speaking to a friendly audience of establishment Republicans, after re-inserting himself in the immigration reform with the release of a controversial book on the issue a month prior.
But as he moves towards a probable presidential run, and the far less friendly terrain of the GOP primary fight, the comments, which were shared with CNN by Democratic tracking firm American Bridge, are certain to deepen already developing headaches for him on both the left and especially the right, as conservatives react in a mixture of bewilderment and eye-rolling when confronted with some of Bush's resurfaced lines on immigration.
"I've never felt like the sins of the parents should be ascribed to the children, you know," Bush said in 2013. "If your children always have to pay the price for adults decisions they make how fair is that? For people who have no country to go back to which are many of the DREAMers it's ridiculous to think that there shouldn't be some accelerated path to citizenship."
Bush's spokeswoman, Kristy Campbell, said the comments didn't mark a departure from Bush's previously-stated positions on immigration reform. Bush wasn't suggesting, she said, that border security isn't an important aspect of reform.
"Governor Bush has been extraordinarily clear that we need to address the border crisis by fixing our broken immigration system. Border security is a key and chief component of sustainable and effective immigration reform," she said.
Other comments included that Bush declared that "it's not possible in a free country to completely control the border without us losing our freedoms and liberties."
He even suggested the mayor of Detroit the economically depressed Midwestern city where he's giving his first policy address of the 2016 campaign on Wednesday use immigration to "repopulate" the city.
RELATED: Bush pitches 'reform conservatism' in Detroit
"It just seems to me that maybe if you open up our doors in a fair way and unleashed the spirit of peoples' hard work, Detroit could become in really short order, one of the great American cities again," Bush said then. "Now it would look different, it wouldn't be Polish...But it would be just as powerful, just as exciting, just as dynamic. And that's what immigration does and to be fearful of this, it just seems bizarre to me."
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Past Bush immigration remarks shock conservatives - CNN.com