Bill Keller Finds Something to Like in Newt Gingrich

New York Times columnist Bill Keller locates "The Good Newt" in  the former House speaker's position on immigration:

You have to get past a certain amount of red-meat rhetoric and brush aside some half-baked notions that are typical Newt, more smart-alecky than smart. (His plan for local citizen boards to pass judgment on which immigrants get deported sounds to me like the Neighborhood Watch from hell.) But you will find that on major points Gingrich is consistent with the best proposals compiled by serious students of this subject…

Here's what Newt gets:

First, immigration is a rejuvenation of our economy, a source of invention and investment at the high end and of tax-paying, productive labor at the low end. So the foundation of a new policy should be the opening of more, and more-efficient, legal channels for the newcomers who will refresh our ingenuity and replenish our aging work force (and, by the way, pay to keep the Social Security funds filled for boomers like me).

Second, you can't sell reform unless it begins with enforcement. Restrictionists rightly point out that the last major reform bill in 1986 promised not only legalization but tougher employer sanctions and beefed-up border controls. In a booming, labor-hungry economy, those things did not come to pass. Critics of legalization are justified in saying we won't be fooled again….

Third, there is no easy solution to the 11 million already here. We are not going to legalize 11 million lawbreakers; that's politically untenable. Neither are we going to uproot and expel the equivalent of the population of Ohio — severing families, spending billions and creating a shamefully cruel spectacle. So we set some rules. The recently arrived, the unattached and, obviously, the gangbangers and criminals go home. The deeply rooted, productive families pay a price to stay.

Despite his objections to Gingrich's local review boards (and his double border fence), Keller endorses cracking down on employers and requiring "a national identity card" as part of the intensified enforcement he says must accompany reforms aimed at boosting legal immigration. One could argue just the opposite: that allowing in more people who want to live and work here will reduce the need for enforcing arbitrary obstacles between supply and demand. Sadlly, both Keller and Gingrich do sound more more tolerant, humane, realistic, and honest on this subject than most Republicans, even those who claim to favor free markets.

I compared Gingrich's immigration stance with Mitt Romney's in a column last month.