The former Speaker of the House of Representatives said “community boards” should be set up across America to judge which of the estimated 11 million people living there without permission should be deported, and which given the right to remain.
“If you've been here 25 years and you have 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,” he said during a debate on national security in Washington, DC.
Mr Gingrich's proposal was attacked by his rivals and risked enraging the conservative Tea Party movement, which was unforgiving when Governor Rick Perry of Texas said in a previous debate that anyone opposing subsidised education for the children of illegal immigrants was “heartless”.
Insisting he was “prepared to take the heat” for the plan, Mr Gingrich was criticised by Michelle Bachmann, a Minnesota congresswoman, who said: “We need to move away from magnets, not offer more”.
Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who remains the favourite to win the nomination, said the policy would “only encourage more people to do the same thing”, adding: “People respond to incentives”. » | Jon Swaine, Washington | Wednesday, November 23, 2011
