Marietta Daily Journal
December 3, 2011

D.A. King: Gingrich guilty of ‘crackpot immigration trickery’

D.A. King
Columnist

“The Krieble Foundation is a very good red card program that says, you get to be legal but you don’t get a path to citizenship, and so there’s a way that ultimately you end up with a country where there’s no more illegality, but you haven’t automatically given amnesty to anyone… I would urge all of you to look at the Krieble Foundation Plan“
— Newt Gingrich on his legalization proposal for illegal aliens during the Nov. 22 GOP debate.

Listen to Newt Gingrich when he urges us to look at his “red card” amnesty plan from Denver’s Krieble Foundation. I strongly encourage GOP voters and the semi-curious media to do a careful fact check. You may want to get out your red pen to correct Newt’s, ahem “oversights” in describing his plan to eliminate the illegal population by converting illegals into “guest workers.”

Redefining the concept of “amnesty” is an old and transparently lame political maneuver. In 2007 when some Republicans (hola, Lindsey Graham, John McCain and George W. Bush) sided with Ted Kennedy to attempt passage of another legalization bill, you stood a better chance of hearing it described as a crook-necked squash than the amnesty it was.

Any legislation or administrative legalization policy that allows illegal aliens to stay in the U.S. is amnesty-again.

The current president put in place a policy to take already-captured illegal aliens out of deportation proceedings and give them work permits earlier this year. That’s an amnesty. So is the Gingrich plan to reclassify illegals as legal workers. Most Americans recognize the redefinition deception.

An “oversight” in the 34-page, business-administered, Krieble plan (“The Red Card Solution”) Gingrich presents: “You get to be legal but you don’t get a path to citizenship.”

Uh-uh. Read page 28: “In accordance with the founding American principle of equal opportunity under the law, anyone in the world can apply to be a U.S. citizen, whether they are here as guest workers or not.” And further down on the same page, as if to emphasize the truth: “Anyone from anywhere should be able to apply for U.S. citizenship at any time, including temporary workers. … For the large majority of workers, though, this is not an issue and it should not become an issue in creating the new ‘red card’ program.”

For most Americans sick of crackpot immigration trickery, it is an issue.

Even if the newly legalized aliens were denied the opportunity to become American citizens as we are told, how long would take the ACLU and La Raza to organize nationwide marches in American streets with millions of “victimized” screamers demanding citizenship — and the vote?

What about border security in Newt’s magic red card plan? The promise on page 25 sounds eerily familiar to 1986: “Many leaders see complete border control as prerequisite to the workability of any new guest worker program, but the two must go hand in hand. However, once the system is in place, tough civil penalties and absolute border control are crucial to success.” It’s the promise of future border security again. Like in the 1986 amnesty for which Newt voted.

More from page 29: “Those who support a new work program but suggest that border security must come first actually have it backwards,” reads Newt’s scheme. Oops!

Gingrich — and Obama — tell us that we are somehow “inhumane” if we apply our existing immigration laws to fugitive illegals with children.

Page 20 of Newt’s plan on temporary workers: (the red card is) “…a simple way for workers and their families to come to the U.S. for specific jobs and for specified periods of time. It would also require them leave the U.S. at the end of that time.”

Sure they will. Because they so respect the rule of law, right? But wouldn’t it be inhumane then too?

Maybe compassionate Newt would propose local review boards again to decide which illegal aliens should be allowed to stay. I think I see a pattern here.

The Red Card Solution publication cited by the would-be American president who seems to have gone Pinocchio on his enforcement plans smugly informs us that “America is more an idea than a place …” (page 20).

Meanwhile, breathless supporters who wailed “NO!” to legalization from Bush and Obama carefully assure us that “conservative” Gingrich is one of the smartest people in politics.

Maybe, but increasingly, on immigration, that is rather like being the tallest building in Hahira.

D.A. King is president of the Cobb-based Dustin Inman Society. He has posted a link to the entire Krieble Foundation’s ‘Red Card Solution’ publication cited by Gingrich on his blog at MDJonline.com.

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