Gingrich: Time for 'national conversation' about immigrants living in country illegally who 'obey the law'

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: The Hill

01/29/26 4:11 PM ET


Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) on Wednesday said the country needs a national conversation about immigrants lacking permanent legal status who “obey the law,” as public opinion sours on the Trump administration’s deportation sweeps.

“We need a national conversation about what we’re going to do, about people who’ve come here, some of them 20 years ago, who’ve been obeying the law, paying taxes, good neighbors, have kids, go to PTA. Very few Americans want to see the police walk in and pick them up and deport them,” Gingrich said during an appearance on Fox Business Network.

“On the other hand, people do not want to give them citizenship. So there should be some middle ground here on long-term goals,” he added.

Gingrich’s comments coincide with Fox News host Sean Hannity speaking out against workplace raids during immigration enforcement crackdowns nationwide.

Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5713623-gingrich-immigration-reform-conversation/

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Gingrich is a big voice behind the scenes manipulating the GOP Congress to bend the knee. Whenever I see something about Gingrich, I add this (from The Atlantic) -

The Man Who Broke Politics

Newt Gingrich turned partisan battles into bloodsport, wrecked Congress, and paved the way for Trump’s rise. Now he’s reveling in his achievements.

Story by McKay Coppins
November 2018 Issue

Updated on October 17, 2018

[snip]

On June 24, 1978, Gingrich stood to address a gathering of College Republicans at a Holiday Inn near the Atlanta airport. It was a natural audience for him. At 35, he was more youthful-looking than the average congressional candidate, with fashionably robust sideburns and a cool-professor charisma that had made him one of the more popular faculty members at West Georgia College. But Gingrich had not come to deliver an academic lecture to the young activists before him—he had come to foment revolution.

“One of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty,” he told the group. “We encourage you to be neat, obedient, and loyal, and faithful, and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around the campfire but are lousy in politics.” For their party to succeed, Gingrich went on, the next generation of Republicans would have to learn to “raise hell,” to stop being so “nice,” to realize that politics was, above all, a cutthroat “war for power”—and to start acting like it.

The speech received little attention at the time. Gingrich was, after all, an obscure, untenured professor whose political experience consisted of two failed congressional bids. But when, a few months later, he was finally elected to the House of Representatives on his third try, he went to Washington a man obsessed with becoming the kind of leader he had described that day in Atlanta. The GOP was then at its lowest point in modern history. Scores of Republican lawmakers had been wiped out in the aftermath of Watergate, and those who’d survived seemed, to Gingrich, sadly resigned to a “permanent minority” mind-set. “It was like death,” he recalls of the mood in the caucus. “They were morally and psychologically shattered.”

But Gingrich had a plan. The way he saw it, Republicans would never be able to take back the House as long as they kept compromising with the Democrats out of some high-minded civic desire to keep congressional business humming along. His strategy was to blow up the bipartisan coalitions that were essential to legislating, and then seize on the resulting dysfunction to wage a populist crusade against the institution of Congress itself. “His idea,” says Norm Ornstein, a political scientist who knew Gingrich at the time, “was to build toward a national election where people were so disgusted by Washington and the way it was operating that they would throw the ins out and bring the outs in.”

[snip]

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/newt-gingrich-says-youre-welcome/570832/

But in any case on this issue...

Meanwhile, where are former SOHs Cheeto Boner and Eddie Munster?

[RandySF]

1. George W Bush, to his credit, provided a blueprint.

[C Moon]

2. ICE definitely doesn't obey the law.

[Skittles]

3. THAT IS THE OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF THEM, ASSHOLE

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[DJ Synikus Makisimus]

4. Someone spike his milk? No one wants to "solve" immigration.

Immigrants are the fall guys for any sort of malfeasance that politicians choose to whip up their base. Historically, they've been the "cause" of disease (or its spread), the "cause" of organized crime," the reason parts of towns and cities turn into slums, and are "chronically impoverished." All that as if it weren't society's elite keeping folks in that predicament, mostly as a source of cheap labor from which they can squeeze greater profits.

US voters have not historically been especially worldly or smart, and have always been easily led to hate people who are different from themselves in some way or another by "clever" politicians. I haven't noticed that changing recently. So immigrants are the perfect political patsies; immigrants of color even more so in racist AmeriKKKa. Republicans currently have more haters than the other guys, but if those other guys make any move toward a normal discussion about the subject, the right-wing media verse is all over them - so they don't. Democrats, especially moderates, seem to live in constant fear of Fox, OAN and the rest. So short story long, not bloody likely.

On the other hand, if Newt is looking to run for something as a Democrat somewhere, I'm sure the "moderates" at the DNC are all ears - just like they would be for Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger.

[travelingthrulife]

18. Yup. If they wanted to solve undocumented worker problem it could easily and efficiently be done

by arresting those hiring them. That is also illegal.

Throw a few of them in jail and there would be a solution found to our undocumented worker problem immediately.
Make immigration easier and not dragged out for years and years.

[BidenRocks]

5. Fuck Newt!

He is a big part of our government being fucked up and polarized.

[PatSeg]

20. Oh absolutely

He laid the groundwork for so much of what we're seeing today. He should crawl back under the rock he's been living under, no one cares what he has to say.

[Cirsium]

24. Thank you

[Irish_Dem]

6. From the man who helped write the book on GOP dirty tactics, revenge, evil.

GFY Newt.

[greymattermom]

7. Green card

Already exists.

[Historic NY]

22. And they are locking them up too

[Chasstev365]

8. You started alot of the shit that got us to where we are at as a nation, Newt!

* View Democrats as the "enemy"
* Be as hypocritical as you want
* Never compromise, even if it would help your constituents
* Have short, stupid slogans targeted at the ignorant.

So do us all a favor and die from fucking yourself!

[2naSalit]

9. STFU, sNewty!

Even if he sounds like he makes sense, he has a bomb behind his back. No words that fall from his facial sphincter are worth hearing.

Stop wasting good air already! JFC!

[sinkingfeeling]

10. I seem to recall there was a bipartisan bill to address this that TSF torpedoed.

[Javaman]

11. and what exactly does this piece of shit know about obeying the law.

perhaps old shit head new, way past his due date, should reflect upon how he left congress, huh?

[ColoringFool]

12. Maybe Newty's Having A Lee Atwater Moment, IYKWIM.🤞

[Old Crank]

13. Time for Gingrich to shut his cancerous mouth.

He lead the charge to this incivility running rampant today.

[damifino10]

14. B!!eware

As a 1st Nation Person says, "Newt speaks with forked tongue."

[Raven123]

15. Newty said in Feb 2025 Trump may be the most consequential president since Lincoln

Won’t cite the RW news sources, but I remember seeing the video replayed.

He said Trump was taking a sledgehammer to the establishment. Gingrich loved it. Turns out the people don’t like those consequences and Newty shares the blame.

[Ray Bruns]

16. Who reanimated this fossil And asked for his opinion?

[travelingthrulife]

17. Isn't he dead yet??

Obviously, he knew someone personally who was affected.

[valleyrogue]

19. Ask the companies that employ them in order to exploit them for cheap labor,

you dipshit.

People wouldn't be coming to this country, legally or illegally, if it weren't for jobs.

[Cirsium]

25. What's wrong with that?

Of course people are coming here for jobs. They are escaping worse exploitation. Of course.

Wealthy people cross borders all of the time and do W-ever-TF they want to do - set up sweat shops, for example, in order to increase their wealth. Why shouldn't working class people have the same freedom in order to save their families?

[valleyrogue]

28. My point is this: These people are blaming the people who come here and NOT the employers

who employ them, and that is the root of the issue.

This anti-immigration rhetoric is STUPID because the problem is being misdirected.

And YES, there IS a problem when employers EXPLOIT them.

It does NOT matter where the immigrants come from. There is NOTHING good about exploitation of workers, period.

[Cirsium]

29. I know

It is ridiculous. Are people unable to think in terms other than the the punishment model for every social ill?

Immigrants are escaping much worse exploitation on the other side of the border. Workers on the farms here are paid the same no matter their status, and that is not at all unusual. The children of immigrants here are getting college educations and buying homes. Punishing farmers closes that window of opportunity. I don't know of any farmer intentionally hiring "illegals." Of course, there are always exceptions.

If you want someone to blame, go after the capitalists from the US and Europe who are running the sweat shops, mines and plantations in the global south and supporting police state regimes. Go after management everywhere for widespread systemic worker exploitation and advocate for organized labor if you want a comprehensive and humane "solution" to the so-called "problem" of immigration.

The problem is not immigration, it is neo-colonialism, which is driving millions of people into desperation.

[Historic NY]

21. People really need to go and investigate their own families backgrounds

I can guarantee many will find a good number of gparents ggparents gggparents the were living as undocumented or resident aliens here. My Grandmother always wanted to become a citizen coming here in 1904, she married had 8 children, lost her husband just before WWII, was registered as an alien. My family tried to keep the farm going but it became difficult, as children married and had there own familes. In 1966 she finally became a citizen. I just came across pictures of that day. She lived as a citizen until she died at age 96.

The point is things got in the way, language barriers, life in general, finally her daughters helped her study up. From the time my grandfather bought the farm they lived a hectic life between community activities and church, they didn't have my time. My grandmother said its was like a circus and she ran the kitchen at all hours, with people coming an going. My gfather bought his siblings over and they did all the initial declarations back then. His father came here 3 times in the 1880s which no one living today even knew. We haven't a clue but he want to NY City, went home and died 5 yrs before they left for the US. Our family name was changed by the school and finally formally after one of the daughter wrote requesting its adoption. I have some ideas why he came.

The was no ICE knocking, then.

[Martin68]

23. What rock did Gingrich crawl out from under at this late date to state the obvious? He is one of the reasons we are

where we are right now.

[Hassler]

26. STFU newt. I wouldn't piss in his ear if his brain was on fire.

[LearnedHand]

27. Yes he broke politics but maybe he can help unbreak them

His suggestion is as reasonable as one could hope, and it’s more substantive than any I’ve heard from the other side of the aisle. That is, he clearly states the actual discussion we need to have. As cynical as I feel toward him, I hope his framework bears real fruit.