Was Newt Gingrich crazy to suggest that the United States needed a more "humane" immigration policy? Crazy like a fox, perhaps. Gingrich's gambit wasn't a Rick Perry-style stumble or gaffe: it was a cleverly calculated maneuver. Already dominating Mitt Romney among Tea Party conservatives, he decided that a highly visible move to the center on an issue that is not likely to decide the 2012 election could score him points with GOP voters who wonder if he's as "electable" as Romney.
Many Tea party conservatives, Newt reasons, know that he's more conservative than Romney, and won't let the immigration issue alone sway their votes. After all, he's already thrown them plenty of "red meat" on Obamacare, Iran, and other bellwether issues. At the same time, by suggesting that he's able to reach out to Latino voters in the general election, and has an actual immigration plan to compete with Obama's, he could well win over many moderates who are otherwise still stuck on Mitt.
An actual look at the plan proposed by Gingrich is suggestive of just how much fresh thinking he's done on immigration, though, arguably, he actually cribbed a healthy chunk of his proposal from the so-called "red card" plan developed by Helen Kriebel, executive director of the center-right foundation that bears her name.
Gingrich, like Kriebel, suggests that America's 11 million illegal immigrants aren't all cut from the same cloth and shouldn't be treated in the same way. Some immigrants, essentially the "long-stayers" who've spent 25 or more years in the country, often married with homes and businesses, might be placed on a path to permanent residency, and granted what's known as a "green card," while many others might be permitted to stay and work, but would have to return home after a set contract period. Still others, essentially the most recently arrived, including many day laborers, usually men without families, would simply be deported.
Two aspects of the plan are especially compelling. First, studies have shown that many illegal immigrants have no intention of settling in the United States, and would likely return home anyway, once they had earned sufficient income. Many, in fact, have done that in past years, sometimes returning to the US again after a hiatus, but sometimes not. And their numbers are dwindling in any event. The idea, often propagated by the left, that all immigrants come to the US to stay permanently is largely a myth - but a powerful one. It justifies a "mass amnesty" plan that allows Democrats the opportunity to mobilize a prospective pool of new voters, while portraying conservatives as simply hostile to Latino aspirations
Second, the Kriebel-Gingrich plan neatly separates the GOP from a strictly negative, "party of no" approach to immigration based on the policy of "enforcement only" and "mass deportation" backed by the GOP's "restrictionist" far-right. Gingrich certainly isn't saying "no" to enforcement; in fact, he backs continued efforts to enhance border security and even promises to "seal the border" by 2014. However, his plan focuses more on the positive elements of immigration that Republicans dating back to Ronald Reagan have emphasized: economic growth, family values, and cultural enrichment leading to assimilation. Gingrich wants immigrants to learn English and to become naturalized US citizens, which a high percentage, depending on the immigrant group, fail to do. Many also don't register to vote. Gingrich's plan would create more incentives for that to happen.
Gingrich's plan, in effect creates two tracks for legal status - one leading to citizenship, the other not. Critics could well argue that he's relegating non-citizenship tracked immigrants to "second-class status," as they couldn't get residency, and their children born in the US wouldn't automatically become US citizens. But what Gingrich is doing is so rare in the immigration debate: making distinctions between different types of immigrants, based on their economic and family ties, and their relative contributions to the national interest, and not just treating legalization or deportation as an "all-or-nothing" proposition. Already some national Latino groups are praising Gingrich's courage for standing up to the "nativist" far-right on immigration.
Predictably, none of that has kept Gingrich's GOP rivals, including Romney and Michele Bachmann from attacking his plan as an "amnesty" pure and simple. But Gingrich is counting on some measure of reason to prevail. If you do the actual math, only about 3-4 million illegal immigrants - about a third of those currently here - would get on a track towards citizenship. Probably an equal number would be forced to return home. That could leave another 3 million who qualify for the proposed "red cards."
Gingrich also has a little surprise in store for Romney: His campaign has begun circulating a 2007 "Meet the Press" interview in which the former Massachusetts governor called for the very amnesty that he's now accusing Gingrich of supporting. Which means the next time the two get back to debating, watch for Gingrich to suggest that he's not only more consistent and tougher than Romney on illegal immigration - thereby, reassuring the right - but also more thoughtful and solution-oriented, thereby wooing party moderates.
Gingrich may be many things, not all of them good, but politically inept or foolhardy surely isn't one of them. The next national and state-level GOP polls, including one in ultra-conservative Iowa where Gingrich recently seized a commanding lead, are due out Monday. Those results will be the first good test of the wisdom of Gingrich's daringly played campaign maneuver, and as good an indication as any of his political fortunes in 2012. If Gingrich "survives," which now appears likely, it could well cripple Romney, leaving the former House speaker better positioned than ever to win the nomination.
Bill Schneider: The GOP's Long and Winding Road
1. Clinton's too smart to portray Gingrich as a knee-jerk right-winger. When Clinton was president, and Gingrich speaker, they worked together on a lot of deals - NAFTA and welfare reform, of course - but also a semi-secret pact on Social Security that would have come to fruition were it not for the Lewinsky matter.
2. If the Dems go negative, and try to raise moral issues about Gingrich, they will have Bubba out there having to answer questions about the very same things. We will be dredging up a lot of past unpleasantness - mainly for the Democrats.
Gingrich was fined and censured, you say? Yes, but Clinton was Impeached.
My suggestion to Obama if Gingrich manages to get the GOP nod:
Make Bill Clinton an ambassador somewhere and get him out of the country for a while.
I received an email from an "Immigrant Rights" group bragging about the recall of Arizona State Senator Russel Pearce who wrote the state's immigration law:
http://redwriteblue.blog.com/2011/11/12/nefarious-victory/
the price is RIGHT
whether it's wink wink History lessons for Fannie and Freddie, or Cheap Latino workers for AgriBusiness, when ya buy Newt he stays BOUGHT
Hello! Gingrich is now in first because a plurality of Americans actually function under the rules of common sense--a point Bill Clinton has seconded. What the Tea Party and other extreme Conservatives refuse to admit is the practicality of the matter.
Gingrich has not compromised a single one of his conservative positions. He explained this particular position on immigration around 2002. We are not dealing with new material here. Gingrich is about to start taking flack from the right, which means he is exactly over the target.
It also means he has just become electable.
Some indication here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/us/politics/19evangelicals.html?pagewanted=all.
Iowa is one thing, South Carolina is another. I don't think Newt's anywhere near as vulnerable in SC, and besides a good 40% of primary voters there, unlike in Iowa, are indies.
Who, in their right mind. would deport parents who pay payroll and income taxes and take care of their children without taxpayer assistance when the alternative is their American born children would become wards of the state--supported by taxpayers--while they complete their educations.
Really!
Prescott, Arizona had car loads of guys drive by a grade school mural yelling FOUL racial slurs, and the school officials asked the artists to LIGHTEN the portraits....http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/06/04/20100604arizona-mural-sparks-racial-debate.html
In Jena, Louisiana a noose was left tied under a tree on school grounds as a HATE CRIME.
Don't act as if hatred has evaporated, Matthew Shepard didn't bash himself, didn't pistol whip himself, and leave his body hanging on a fence to die of exposure...BY HIMSELF!
friend of Russell Pearce JT Ready....J.T. Ready A Confirmed Neo Nazi Raw & Unedited ....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7XX9J4BCPc
YOU don't make that decision, Iowa voters make that decision. Should they say no thanks to Newt, he's OVER.
But really, he's not. Neither one is a true conservative that values individual liberty. They are both smart, shrewd, Machiavellian big-gov neo-cons that value political power above all else. When you break down all Newt's words and actions, you see he is a DC-insider that wants government to influence all aspects of citizen life, every bit as much as progressives do. Big Brother Newt represents the libertarian right? No way! But he has a lot of them fooled.
or, you hate having to compete for jobs at 3d World wages and conditions. But since the schools got cut back so much you don't have the skills to compete for the 1st world jobs.
The 1986 law imposed employer sanctions that were toothless. It gave 3 million undocumented workers permanent green cards, yet it provided no credible way - or incentive - for more people to enter legally.
It was a pastiche of initiatives that pandered to the different immigration constituencies - Latinos and businesses above all.
It's not even clear that most of the GOP - or even most of the Tea Party - really backs a harsh crackdown, because as you and others note, the cheap labor is profitable, and the business lobbies that fund GOP candidates don't want to lose that supply.
Enforcement's only real constituency is the INS/ICE - the agency responsible for enforcement that has an interest in seeing its budget and operational role increases, and those seeking to exploit legitimate citizen upset over the confusion and hypocrisy of our immigration laws.
The problem is, the harsh state legislative crackdowns like Arizona's and Alabama's don't really solve much, it's costly to implement, and the results seem fairly meager - other than exporting the problem to a different state.
To me, though, totally understandable that states move in to act when the feds won't.
That is simply not true. There is a large component in the Republican Party that hates immigrants, and it has to do with ethnophobia. They are not the corporatists who need someone cheap to pick their vegetables, they are the ones who believe in a blond-haired, blue-eyed Amerika. And they are certainlhy out there in big numbers in that party.
Newt Gingrich on Illegal Immigration
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebkwJ5OxLvE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rxg7X_Rbf84&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9JxGh4-SpA&feature=related
Is that what you're trying to say?
The discussion will be much clearer with this diversion.