WASHINGTON -- Hoping to preempt potential riffs with one minority group critical to Republican chances in the general election, GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush may have sparked anger with another.

The former Florida governor has been in hot water since last week, when he used the controversial term "anchor baby" to describe immigrant mothers who come to the U.S. to have children for the purpose of getting them citizenship. Hispanic groups have long considered the term deplorable for its insinuation that mothers would use procreation as a method of gaming the immigration system. And while Bush pleaded that he lacked a better description, on Monday he offered a new explanation: He wasn't referring to Latinos at all, he explained, but rather Asian immigrants.

What I was talking about was the specific case of fraud being committed, where theres organized efforts, and frankly its more related to Asian people coming into our country having children in that organized effort, taking advantage of a noble concept, which is birthright citizenship, he said.

Though the former Florida governor was describing a real phenomenon known as birth tourism , his clarification sparked an entirely new set of recriminations, this time from Asian-Americans. It also provided yet another data point for how difficult it has been for Republican candidates to navigate the immigration debate during this primary process. Bush has said that candidates running for the White House should be prepared to lose the primary election in order to win the general. But in explaining his view of anchor babies, he seems to have tiptoed away from that advice.

Bush has previously called on the GOP to better engage Asian-Americans, as they are the fastest-growing minority group in the country, yet are unlikely to be contacted by political campaigns.

"Asian-Americans are actually the canary in the coal mine, I believe, for Republicans," Bush said in 2013 . "If we have lost connectivity to emerging voters, not because of our policies so much, but because we are not engaged in issues of importance to them, then I think we pay a price."