Amy Taylor of DMIBlog has a detailed look at Newt Gingrich’s positioning on immigration reform, part of a continuing series evaluating where the presidential candidates stand. In many ways Gingrich’s positions are run-of-the-mill for Republicans who aren’t taking Hunter-Tancredo styled stances. He thinks illegal immigration poses a national security threat and wants to be able to immediately deport any undocumented immigrants arrested. Gingrich wants to greatly reduce the flow of illegal immigrants by making the legal avenues of immigration more accessible.
If Gingrich had his way, he would seal the border with Mexico, deport undocumented immigrants within 72 hours of their arrest at the border and prohibit judicial review of such cases. Where he differs from his conservative allies is in that he would expand avenues for legal immigration in order to reduce illegal immigration. The Washington Times reports Ginrich arguing that “we have to have a relatively open green-card policy to relieve pressure” from Mexico and elsewhere, as well as from U.S. firms seeking workers.”
In an article he wrote laying out his ideas on immigration for the National Review, Newt Gingrich criticizes what he calls a dishonest immigration system created by our government’s inability to enforce the laws, businesses profiting off of breaking the law and illegal immigrants lured here to break the law and what he calls a “slow, cumbersome, rude, heartless, and incompetent” immigration bureaucracy.
Gingrich looks at the presence of immigrants in America as a problem of distantiality between English speaking American citizens and everyone else. At CPAC one of Gingrich’s “idea-oriented, positive dialogues” to bring the Republican Party new voters and create a new tone in politics was to make English the official language of the United States [pardon me while I snort with laughter].
On that note, he wants to “establish patriotic integration and the primacy of English (English first, not English only) combined with a requirement that Americans can only vote in American elections and applicants for citizenship have to select where their loyalty is.” He argues against language access saying “culturally we have shifted from an integrating, English-speaking American citizenship focused model of immigration to an acceptance of foreign habits (which are going to include corruption), foreign loyalties (illustrated by the waving of foreign flags by many of the marchers, some with attitudes of contempt) and the insistence (not necessarily by immigrants) on creating non-English speaking legal and educational structures.”
He does not mention the fact that the overwhelming majority of immigrants do want to learn English but that there aren’t enough ESL classes to meet the demand. As DMI Fellow Andrew Friedman mentioned in an op-ed, a report by the New York Immigration Coalition shows that over 90% of the need for English as a Second Language classes goes unmet.
Gingrich is pushing assimilation and the prejudice that today’s immigrants simply want to carve out a piece of space in America and make it like where ever they came from. Taylor writes, “Throughout the [National Review] article he voices his concern that somehow for unstated reasons today’s immigrants are different from past generations when it comes to their desire to learn English and integrate.”
The comparative advantage that Gingrich’s immigration plans has over other Republican candidates is that he’s holding conservative, yet comprehensive, positions on all aspects of the debate. It’s not simply about throwing undocumented workers out and limiting the avenues for legal immigration, but creating higher expectations for how businesses act and what behavior is prerequisite once legal immigrants arrive in the US. What’s unfortunate is that Gingrich is still pushing for a set of expectations that were not mandated for white immigrants from Europe in the twentieth and nineteenth centuries and thus his rhetoric retains the tinge of racism that smears most Republicans’ positioning on immigration.
Technorati Tags: Amy Taylor, immigration reform, Newt Gingrich
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