No, he is advocating allowing illegal immigrants to stay in this country and become legal. Not necessarily a bad position, but certainly no more acceptable to the pro-law crowd here than allowing illegal immigrant children to get a break on their tuition costs.
And he is defending it as “humane”, and saying people who disagree with him are inhumane. In that regard, it is exactly like Perry saying people who disagreed with him didn’t have a heart. Perry said people who thought illegal immigrants should be barred from paying in-state tuition for college didn’t have a heart, Gingrich says that people who think all illegals SHOULD be removed from this country are inhumane.
That’s not about whether it is PRACTICAL — it’s an indictment of the motivations of those who want illegals to be removed.
It’s not hard for me to overlook — I agree with Gingrich on the merits, but don’t think others are inhuman, just wrong.
Conferring rights and privileges upon illegal aliens has a corrosive effect on the Rule of Law, the very foundation of our Republic. It is also a slap in the face to legal immigrants who have followed the rules and obeyed the laws.
We have over three million intending immigrants waiting their turn overseas to enter this country legally. They have completed all of the paperwork, background investigations, and physical examinations. What kind of message does it send to them that those who entered illegally get to stay and work here, the object of their crime?
Any legislation that legalizes the status of those who broke our laws by entering our country illegally and allows them to stay is amnesty. We must not only prevent the Democrats and some moderate Republicans from hijacking the meaning of the word amnesty, but the public must be made aware about the true impact of an amnesty.
The Heritage Foundation concluded that the cost of amnesty would be $2.6 trillion just for increased entitlement program costs. And the number of additional LEGAL immigrants who would join those who were the recipients of amnesty through chain migration, i.e., family reunification, would approach 70 million over a 20-year period, assuming there are only 12 million illegal aliens. We cannot assimilate such numbers. An amnesty would destroy the United States of America with the stroke of a pen.