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Background

There has been a breakdown of will on the part of America’s leaders to control our borders and ensure that new immigrants learn to be American.

The thousands of people we now see marching in the streets of U.S. cities over immigration policy is the product of two decades of a fundamentally dishonest immigration system.

For two decades, the U.S. government has failed to control the borders while many U.S. businesses have profited by breaking the law. In turn, the U.S. government failure to enforce the immigration laws has encouraged outright defiance of federal authority by certain state and local jurisdictions. Adding insult to this state of affairs is an immigration bureaucracy that has been slow, cumbersome, rude, heartless, and incompetent in the discharge of its duties.

This dishonest system has lured millions to enter our country illegally and to obtain work here illegally.

As the United States acts to transform our immigration system from a dishonest to an honest one, it is understandable that those living and working here illegally--especially those who have lived and worked here illegally for a long period of time--are anxious and fearful about the future. While our two decade long failure does not mean that we are required to maintain a dishonest system, it does mean that we must have a humanitarian period of transition as we replace an illegal pattern of immigration with a legal one.

Newt Gingrich is a senior fellow at AEI.

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