I don’t know why you’re even bringing any of that up, since nobody disagrees with the premise that enforcement thru attrition works.
Because it seems that Newt and others are making fun of Romney's self-deport remark, which may have been unartful, but that is the objective of attrition thru enforcement. I wish all the Rep candidates would say that they support attrition thru enforcement and are against any kind of amnesty.
In 1986 we had a "one-time" amnesty (Simpson-Mazzoli) that was supposed to solve the illegal alien problem for good. The advocates stressed that it would be one-time affair and that never again would we have an amnesty. The government estimated that 1 million would apply, but the true number turned out to be 2.7 million and the process was rife with fraud as phony document centers were set up within blocks of the processing centers. Under the 1986 law you had to prove you had been here for five years. One of the people given amnesty was part of the 1993 WTC bombing.
We now have 12 to 20 million illegal aliens and now there is another major push for a second amnesty. It doesn't work. When you reward something, you get more of it.