Newt Gingrich appeared on the Univision show "Al Punto" yesterday [1] [2], discussed immigration, and showed yet again just how wrong he is on that and related issues:

1. Gingrich said one of the things he's looking in order to deal with the millions of illegal aliens in the U.S. is something similar to the WWII draft boards [3]. Per Gingrich, local communities would decide whether an illegal alien is appropriate to be legalized or not. At the very least, that program would be very easily abused. In small towns, those on the boards would probably be directed in one way or another by the town bosses, for instance the local version of the Rubashkins. In a big city like Los Angeles, the board would be under the control of someone like Antonio Villaraigosa or others who support illegal immigration either for financial or racial reasons. Even if the boards were tightly controlled, why bother? Why doesn't Gingrich support attrition in order to encourage illegal aliens to return home?

2. Gingrich highlighted - instead of shying away from - the fact that he helped push Temporary Protected Status and how he "helped save hundreds of thousands of Central Americans from being deported" [4]. The problem with TPS is it's actually "Permanent Protected Status", as it keeps being extended year after year. While most of those covered by TPS are law-abiding, there's also a large, dangerous criminal element which has infiltrated the U.S. Hopefully one of Gingrich's opponents (if Gingrich gets any popular support, which isn't clear) will raise that point.

3. Gingrich comes out against comprehensive immigration reform but only because he supports incrementalism [5]. Once again: why not simply support attrition?

4. Gingrich, as he's indicated before, would support an amended version of the DREAM Act. However it's amended, it's an anti-American bill that would let the illegal aliens covered by it take college educations away from Americans. It's a direct attack on the fundamental concept of citizenship, and Newt Gingrich supports it.

5. Instead of using the legally-correct "illegal aliens", Gingrich uses the politcally-correct "undocumented" [3]. No variant of "illegal" appears in either of the partial transcripts.

On a sidenote, Michael Scherer of Time Magazine has this to say:

He has founded a website for conservative Hispanics and helped to organize conferences to champion conservative politics among the Spanish-speaking community. In the Univision interview, Gingrich speaks Spanish twice in a show of solidarity.

Primarily speaking Spanish is not "conservative", or at least is not culturally conservative. Gingrich might be socially conservative or a fiscal con, but he's clearly not culturally conservative: he supports (and is trying to profit from) Balkanization, he won't call out a Fifth Columnist like Ramos, and he supports a bill that's a direct attack on U.S. citizenship.

5/17/11 UPDATE: The "as bad as CNN" above might not have made much sense before except to those who've been following along with our Ramos coverage. I've since added the link to the debate CNN held in which they allowed Ramos to ask questions without disclosing he's not even a citizen of the U.S.

11/30/11 UPDATE: I removed the first point, since it was in error. In fact, Jorge Ramos did become a U.S. citizen a few years ago. The original first point in toto was: Gingrich failed to point out that the host of the show (Jorge Ramos) refuses to seek U.S. citizenship despite living here for several years. Ramos is a Mexican partisan who represents Mexican interests. He's also a popular TV host among U.S. Hispanics. Someone like, say, Tom Tancredo would realize how problematic that is. Newt Gingrich said nothing, making him as bad as CNN. That was based on out-of-date information.

-------
[1] Partial transcript: politico.com/news/stories/0511/54959.html

[2] Partial transcript: swampland.time.com/2011/05/14/
newt-gingrich-seeks-hispanic-voters (by Scherer)

[3]
Gingrich:

"First, somebody who’s been here 20 years, somebody who’s been here 20 years and is married and has three kids and has been paying taxes and lived a totally peaceful life and is a citizen – but by the way they came here 20 years ago outside the law. We got to find the way to routinize and get them in the law without necessarily getting them on a path to citizenship. Now there ought to be a way to do that. And one of the things I’m looking at, and this may come as a surprise to you, is in World War II we had a selective service board where every local community could apply common sense to the draft process. We may want to think about a citizen board that can actually look at things and decide, is this a person that came in two months ago and doesn’t nearly have any ties here? Or is this a person who clearly is integrated into the society but unfortunately has been undocumented, therefore, we have to rethink how we are approaching them."

[4]
Gingrich:

"I’ve worked on immigration since 1986 and in the late 1990′s as Speaker, I helped save hundreds of thousands of Central Americans from being deported and we amended the law and we made sure that they could achieve residency in the United States [...note: Ramos points out he means TPS...] particularly Nicaraguans and Hondurans and El Salvadorians. So I’ve been at this a long time."

[5]
Gingrich:

"I don’t think you can pass a comprehensive bill. President Bush couldn’t pass a comprehensive bill, when Barack Obama had a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate he couldn’t pass a comprehensive bill, but I think you could step by step pass a series of bills and achieve remarkable progress in the next three or four years. It’s very disappointing to see the immigration reduced to a political game. We have an absolute obligation to find a way to get America to be a country in which everyone who is here is here legally and I think we’ve got to have a much different conversation than the El Paso speech."