Illegal immigrants are “a critical part of our society” and should be provided a route to amnesty, Republican presidential candidate John Kasich tells a coalition of Hispanic company executives.

“For those that are here that have been law abiding, God bless them,” he told the business group, which is a major advocate for expanded immigration.

“Then I think the [illegals] should have a path to legalization… I think that can pass,” Kasich said, using one of the euphemisms for granting legal residency to illegal immigrants.

The Ohio governor also claimed the illegal immigrants are skilled. The illegals “are a critical part of our society from doctors to engineers to lawyers– well, I don’t know if we need more of them [lawyers]– but we’ve got a lot of teachers, whatever,” he said.

Kasich also told the group that one of his top priorities is “expand[ing] the guest workers.”

Currently, the nation annually imports roughly 700,000 short-term guest-workers — plus 1 million legal immigrants, a few hundred thousand additional short-term workers and roughly 350,000 lower-skilled illegal workers — to compete for jobs against the roughly 4.5 million Americans who turn 18 each year.

Kasich’s pro-illegal stance is very unpopular among Republicans and voters, but it is consistent with the views of Democratic progressives and donor-class Republicans who think America should experience a level of foreign migration never before experienced in its history.

After the foreign-born share population reached its last peak during the early part of the 20th century, immigration was reduced for nearly five straight decades to successfully assimilate past arrivals and grow wages. Those immigration curbs were reversed, however, in 1965 because of a Sen. Ted Kennedy-supported immigration law which lifted those immigration caps and opened immigration to predominantly poor and developing countries.

As Breitbart News has previously reported, between 1965 and 2015 immigration added one new resident to the population for every one net birth to the preexisting population– a ratio of one-to-one. But a recent study by Pew projects that between 2015 and 2065, immigration will add seven new people for every one net U.S. birth produced by today’s population– a ratio of seven-to-one.

Today, about nine out of every ten green cards are given to immigrants from Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

The Republican primary is now split between Republicans who have adopted a pro-American immigration platform and candidates who have adopted a pro-foreign worker platform, with Rubio representing the candidate most aggressively in favor of expanding immigration beyond its current record highs.