Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R), pressed by reporter Adam Smith to offer his plan for immigration reform at tonight’s NBC debate in Florida, said he would support “self-deportation” — a policy to make immigrants lives so miserable that they would choose to leave the country on their own:

SMITH: Governor Romney, there’s one thing I’m confused about. You say you don’t want to go and round up people and deport them, but you also say they’d have to go back to their own countries and then apply for citizenship. So if you don’t deport them, how do you send them home?

ROMNEY: Well, the answer is self-deportation, which is people decide that they can do better by going home because they can’t find work here because they don’t have legal documentation to allow them to work here. (Audience laughs) And so we’re not going to round people up. [...] Well, yes, we’d have a card that indicates who’s here legally. And if people are not able to have a card, and have that through an e-verify system to determine that they are here legally, then they’re going to find they can’t find work here. And if people don’t get work here, they’re going to self-deport to a place they can get work.

Romney’s position drew laughs from some in the audience. Watch it:

The position is not a new one for Romney — Eric Fehrnstrom, one of the campaign’s top advisers, offered the “turn the magnets off” solution in November — but it does represent a change from his 2008 policy, when he supported mass deportations.

The “self-deportation” policy is a continuation of Romney’s current radicalism on immigration. Romney has the backing of Kansas Secretary of State and anti-immigration zealot Kris Kobach (R), the author of both Arizona and Alabama’s anti-immigration laws. And Romney’s current “self-deportation” position basically boils down to the policy goal of the Alabama law: he wants to make immigrants’ lives so miserable, they choose to leave the country on their own.

Yesterday, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) announced that she would resign from Congress to focus on her recovery from the horrific mass shooting where she was targeted by mentally ill shooter Jared Lee Loughner. Nine days before this announcement, however, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit handed down a decision which could drastically limit lawmakers’ ability to keep guns away from mentally ill potential assailants such as Loughner.

Although the Supreme Court’s decision in D.C. v. Heller is best known for holding for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep a firearm, Heller also made clear that this right is not absolute. Laws prohibiting concealed weapons, or the carrying of “dangerous and unusual weapons,” or the carrying of firearms in “sensitive places such as schools and government buildings” are still entirely constitutional, as are laws prohibiting the possession of firearms by felons or the mentally ill.

The First Circuit’s decision in United States v. Rehlander, however, suggests there is a serious limit on this ability to keep guns away from people who lack the capacity to handle them. Although the court invokes a technical doctrine to avoid saying so definitively, the court strongly suggests that mentally ill individuals must be allowed to carry guns until they receive a fairly elaborate hearing declaring them unfit to use a gun:

Although the right established in Heller is a qualified right, the right to possess arms (among those not properly disqualified) is no longer something that can be withdrawn by government on a permanent and irrevocable basis without due process. Ordinarily, to work a permanent or prolonged loss of a constitutional liberty or property interest, and adjudicatory hearing, including the right to offer and test evidence if facts are in dispute, is required. It is evidently doubtful that a [Maine temporary committment hearing] provides the necessary process for a permanent deprivation.

If this decision stands the test of time (and, potentially, the Supreme Court) it would drastically alter society’s power to keep guns away from the mentally ill. Loughner, for example, was deemed unqualified to join the military and was asked to leave his community college due to mental health issues, but it is unlikely that either of these incidents meet the bar described by the First Circuit as sufficient to allow someone to lose their ability to carry a firearm because they are mentally ill.

(HT: Eugene Volokh)