For those who have come here illegally, they might have a

In the marketplace of laws and longings, a voice speaks with iron and linen woven together: “For those who have come here illegally, they might have a transition time to set their affairs in order. And then go back home and get in line with everybody else. And if they get in line and they apply to become a citizen and get a green card, they will be treated like everybody else.” So speaks Mitt Romney, and the saying falls like a measured bell—part mercy, part measure, part boundary-stone set upon contested ground. It is the ancient tension between the gate and the hearth: how a city keeps its thresholds while remembering that every traveler carries a story inside their ribs.

Hear the scaffolding beneath the words. Transition time is a small harbor in a storm—an interval for dignity, for farewells, for debts to be settled and tools to be packed. Set their affairs in order: this is not the clang of chains but the sober inventory before a journey. Yet the road is not a circle; it points outward, to go back home and get in line—a phrase that summons the discipline of queues and the moral geometry of fairness. Law, in this telling, is not a fist but a plumb line; compassion, not a flood but a cup measured so that it may be carried without spilling.

To understand the origin of this utterance, recall its hour: a season of debate when a nation argued about borders, belonging, and the burden of promises. Romney’s formulation echoed a broader platform that favored orderly process and personal responsibility—ideas often linked to his campaign’s immigration stance in late 2011 and early 2012. News accounts captured his emphasis: those without status would return, apply, and get in line, while the system would treat approved applicants “like everybody else.” In this framing, the door is not barred forever; it is closed, then reopened by the key of procedure.

Yet any proverb that speaks of lines and laws must also speak of faces. Consider Ellis Island, where oceans of hope once stepped ashore in the early twentieth century: names were recorded, eyes examined, papers stamped, and some were turned away. The line was long, but it was visible; the rules were stern, but they were known. Families learned that to be admitted one must endure inspection and abide by order. Whatever its imperfections, that ritual forged a covenant between arrival and acceptance: the city would open its gates to those who shouldered the ritual of entry, and the newcomers would take their place in the long choir of citizens.

Or listen to a contemporary story, told often across kitchen tables: a student brought to the country as a child—bright, restless, undocumented—who excelled in school yet wandered the maze of status. When policy winds shifted, they sought counsel, gathered transcripts, saved for fees, and—because the path required it—returned to their birth country to file from abroad. Months stretched like wire. But letters finally arrived, visas stamped, and the traveler came again, this time through the front door, trembling and tearful, clutching a passport like a small sunrise. Their joy was not merely personal; it was the relief of alignment—desire braided at last with due process. (Public accounts from the 2012 debates reflected how supporters of such an approach framed it as “self-correction” through legal channels, while critics decried the hardship; the tension itself is part of the quote’s meaning.)

In this light the proverb teaches a severe kindness. It refuses to confuse beautiful words with just outcomes. It insists that compassion and clarity must walk together: mercy without order dissolves into favoritism, order without mercy hardens into stone. The queue—get in line—is not punishment alone; it is the collective promise that no hand will elbow another unseen. To be treated like everybody else is, paradoxically, a form of respect: it declares that destiny is not negotiated in back rooms, but distributed by the same scale for all.

But there is a thorn: the line can be long, the paperwork labyrinthine, the cost heavy for the poor, the separation lacerating for families. Wise elders therefore warn that policy, to be truly just, must be navigable by the humble as well as the strong. A transition time must be real, not rhetorical; the path to apply must be marked in plain language; the offices must open at hours the working can keep. Law should be a staircase—not a sheer cliff—if it wishes the traveler to rise.

Take, then, the lesson into your own hands. First, honor both pillars: fair process and humane practice. Second, wherever you stand—citizen, official, neighbor, or newcomer—do what makes the path straighter: explain forms, translate signs, carry a corner of someone’s burden. Third, resist the fever of slogans. Ask instead: does this rule produce order without cruelty? Does this mercy respect the queue? Fourth, remember that nations, like households, are judged by how they greet the stranger—and also by how they keep their word to those already waiting at the door.

Thus the saying endures, braided of granite and grace. Illegally speaks to what has been; transition time makes room for repair; go back home, get in line, apply, citizen, green card, and treated like everybody else describe a path, narrow but navigable, from shadow into sunlight. Keep the gate and warm the hearth; hold the line and open the hand. For only when law and mercy kiss at the threshold can a people rest, and a newcomer, at last, belong.