Pathway to citizenship

Newt Gingrich's call for a more humane policy toward undocumented immigrants produced the usual reaction from other Republican presidential candidates: they accused him of advocating "amnesty." The former House Speaker had observed, "If you've been here 25 years and you got three kids and two grandkids, you've been paying taxes and obeying the law, you belong to a local church, I don't think we're going to separate you from your family, uproot you forcefully and kick you out."

Gingrich injected a smidgen of reality into the conversation. Most leaders in his party talk as though the 10 million undocumented immigrants in this country snuck across the border last night and should be—could be—rounded up and deported. Such a deportation policy, even if it were remotely feasible, would be inhumane and devastating to families throughout the country.

Whether he knew it or not, Gingrich was describing a great many adult immigrants. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization, 35 percent of immigrants have been in the U.S. 15 years or more, and another 28 percent have been here at least ten years. About half are parents of children under 18 years of age. And 39 percent attend church weekly. In sketching a portrait of an undocumented immigrant as family-loving, hardworking, tax-paying, churchgoing and deeply rooted in the U.S., Gingrich was pretty much sketching the typical immigrant.