Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s decision to open the closing stretch to Iowa and New Hampshire with an appeal on immigration reform struck some as “brave,” others as nuts and me as premature. Over and over again, Beltway closed loops send the wrong signals to political elites on key policy disputes.
The vast majority of Republican voters are not opposed to regularization of the vast majority of illegal aliens living in the country.
But they do not trust the promises of Washington elites on border security, nor should they. Again and again, they have been promised a fence, and again and again, it has not been built.
Americans wonder why 850 miles of double fencing cannot simply get built and patrolled. It is not a vast expenditure and it certainly isn’t a technical challenge.
Ike got the interstate highway system built, for goodness’ sake. Bureaucratic double-talk about “pedestrian fences” versus “vehicle fences” versus “virtual fences” only serve to deepen public cynicism about Beltway candor on the subject.
The answer is that neither Republican or Democratic party elites care to push the issue — for completely different reasons — even though the fence is the outward manifestation of an inner resolve to actually and effectively police the border.
Finish the 850 miles of double fence and the rest of the issue resolves very quickly. “Regularization” isn’t amnesty, as amnesty means the greatly-opposed “path to citizenship” (and voting).
Regularization proponents do not believe that those who entered illegally should ever be allowed to become citizens unless they return to their home countries and get in line.
But neither would regularization insist on “self-deportation” or other magical thinking about 11 million illegal residents of the country, most of whom are deeply- and well-woven into the nation’s fabric.
There is thus a set of policies that binds up as much as 90 percent of the GOP electorate. But that policy set has priorities, a specific roll-out and a deep component of “show me, don’t promise me.”
By jumping immediately to the case for letting some people stay, however, Newt signaled that this is how he primarily sees the issue, not with a priority of border security via fencing but with one of working out who gets to stay first, not last.
Most GOP voters will support such a path when and if — and only when and if — a border fence is built. Not begun. Built. Finished. Two long fences and the roads to service them.
Not 200 miles. Not 350. But at least 750 and probably closer to 850 miles depending on which estimate of “passable terrain” one trusts.
The hardliners on illegal immigration do not control the debate, the center of the GOP does, and that center is security-minded, not xenophobic. When the big immigration deal was proposed in 2007, the big mistake was to talk past, over and around the real center of the debate.
Beltway elites do this a lot. They convince themselves they actually know what is best for the country and what deeply-held beliefs of their constituents can be ignored or finessed.
The same is true about Newt’s broad-brush immigration policy. Details, please, Mr. Speaker. You said nothing about when the fence got built, how long it would be, and when the regularization you propose would kick in relative to that construction schedule. Lay it out. Twenty-five years is the “olly olly oxen free” time span? What about 20 years? 15? Why not 10 if you are over 65?
And when, exactly, does that fence get built relative to the issuance of the new permanent resident cards? And where?
This is the revelation of 2012: Voters went with slogans in 2008 and got burned. In 2010 they got a pledge that many now think was written in invisible ink. This time around they want the specifics.
Examiner Columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.
