Over on the home page, Andrew Johnson has a piece about a 2002 resolution that Scott Walker signed shortly after he took office as Milwaukee county executive, which expresses support for comprehensive immigration reform.

We refer to the governor’s support for amnesty — as the resolution puts it, “legislation that will provide greater opportunity for undocumented working immigrants to obtain legal residency in the United States.” The resolution, which argued that illegal immigrants are subject to “poor working conditions, sexual harassment, and discrimination” in the workplace and are “vulnerable to exploitation,” was supported by amnesty boosters like the AFL-CIO, the U.S. Catholic Conference, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Walker attended a ceremonial signing on Mexican Independence Day.

They point out that the resolution Walker signed was a substitute for another resolution, introduced before Walker was elected, that specifically expressed “wholehearted support for a new program similar to the Federal amnesty enacted by Congress in 1986″ and took a more aggressive pro-amnesty position. They also say that all references to amnesty were deliberately stripped out of the resolution Walker eventually signed at his request. As Andrew noted, Walker spokesman Tom Evenson says the resolution was “stripped of references to amnesty before passage” and that the only reference to it came in an introductory paragraph that referred back to the original resolution but was not included in the body of the substitute resolution itself.

What Walker did sign was a resolution with the following conclusion:

BE IT RESOLVED, that the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors does hereby express its support for comprehensive immigration reform legislation that will provide greater opportunity for undocumented working immigrants to obtain legal residency in the United States and joins the AFL-CIO, the U.S. Catholic Conference, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and other leading business, religious and civic leaders and organizations as well as the City of Milwaukee in urging the U.S. Congress to adopt such legislation.

Walker’s campaign team says that’s not amnesty. We adjusted the language in our piece to remove references to the 1986 legislation and quoted only from the body of the resolution. We’ll let our readers judge where Walker stood in 2002, and where he stands now.

UPDATE: A Walker spokeswoman responds with the following comment:

This is an unfortunate situation that happened because a news organization was too quick to judge on Governor Walker’s history on immigration. The truth is, like many cases in government, there was a process over a long period of time and the end result was much different than where the Milwaukee Board of Supervisors began. After a year long process on amnesty that included hearings and a staff memo that outlined the negatives such as incentivizing breaking the law, a substitute resolution was offered that eliminated every single reference to amnesty as well as the support for the 1986 law. This was done by the very same author of the original resolution and that final product was signed by then- County Executive Walker who has not and does not support amnesty. Governor Walker believes our country’s immigration system is broken, it must be fixed, and we must secure our borders. The governor doesn’t believe in granting amnesty – we must enforce the laws on the books and reform the process for those who want to come to the United States legally.

Here’s the resolution in its entirety: