On paper, Rick Santorum is a candidate for the president of the United States of America. But the former U.S. Senator is polling with less than one percent at the bottom of a stiflingly crowded Republican field, according to a recent poll. So it probably neither helps nor hinders his numbers that he is being called out for a gaffe that made Mitt Romney's "self-deportation" remarks in 2012 look like a harmless slip of the tongue.

In Iowa, still-campaigning Santorum recounted a conversation he had with a high school teacher from the city of Storm Lake, which has a large immigrant population. Said teacher reportedly questioned Santorum's plan to deny work to all undocumented people in the U.S., adding that "the vast majority of her students are from minority families with English language abilities and work experience," the Des Moines Register reported.

“My response is, ‘Great. Do you realize what a blessing they will be to their country when they go back?’ " Santorum said he told a teacher. 

It didn't stop there. Per the Des Moines Register:

[Santorum] said many undocumented immigrants are from poor countries like Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, all of which he described as a “mess,” and would benefit from a large influx of people with American work skills and a knowledge of democracy.

“You are talking about folks who are going to be the leaders of their countries,” Santorum said. “I think that the best thing that we can do to stem the tide of illegal immigration is to have them go home and save their countries.”

There are more than a few lessons here, of course. In its "Gaffe Track" blog, the Atlantic notes that the majority of undocumented immigrants work in low-skill fields "not for self-improvement, but because there aren’t good jobs at home." But even more egregiously overlooked are those Central Americans coming to the U.S. to escape horrific violence in their homelands, who Santorum apparently believes should "go home and save their countries" with the skills they learned in the U.S.