Update December 13th: Looks like the Dream Act is dead, here, from AP.
Today Mark Krikorian (Center for Immigration Studies) writing at The Corner (National Review Online) points us to comments by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich indicating Gingrich’s support for the Dream Act and for former Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush’s role in building support for a path to citizenship for illegal aliens. Hat tip: Richard Falknor, Blue Ridge Forum.
Here is Krikorian, first on the Dream Act delay:
Looks like Harry Reid will postpone the vote until next week, in order to try and get a few Republicans to vote for it when (if) the tax-rates deal is completed. [One version of the Dream Act passed the House yesterday—ed]
Krikorian then cites a radio program and comments from Gingrich that you must go read. Gingrich praised Jeb Bush for his role in helping draft a report that according to Krikorian will create a path to citizenship WITHOUT enforcement first.
That report by Jeb Bush is here, for the Council on Foreign Relations (what, the Trilateral Commission was busy?). My colleague Stanley Renshon, a political scientist at CUNY, has an analysis coming out next week of this and two other blue-ribbon task force reports on immigration, but the upshot of the CFR report is the same as all the other calls for “comprehensive immigration reform” — amnesty and increased immigration in exchange for promises of future enforcement. No surprise from Jeb, but I didn’t think Gingrich was quite that bad on the issue.
I can assure you that if Gingrich believes this, he will have a snowballs chance in hell of being a serious primary contender in the Republican Presidential contest in 2012. Or, let me rephrase that, if he and his Washington insider Republicans (including Jebb Bush, Grover Norquist and even Dick Armey) go this route they will most assuredly be responsible for creating a third party comprised largely of conservative grassroots Tea Partiers.