I’m fine w/ attrition—that comes through sealing the border and vigorously enforcing current immigration laws. Which Newt has explained he’s going to do.
But this idea that we’re going to track down and deport every single illegal immigrant, no exceptions? That’s not going to happen. It isn’t realistic.
The proponents of amnesty are wont to create the false choice between a blanket amnesty and mass deportation of 12 to 20 million illegal aliens. In reality, we have other choices and alternatives that don’t reward people who have broken our laws with the right to stay and work here and an eventual path to citizenship. The 12 to 20 million illegal aliens did not enter this country overnight and they will not leave overnight. Attrition through enforcement works. We have empirical data from Georgia, Oklahoma, and Arizona proving that it does.
During the 2006 amnesty debate, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) commissioned a Zogby poll offering respondents not the false choice between mass deportation or amnesty (a word CIS did not use in the survey), but rather a three-way choice between mass deportation, earned legalization, and attrition — and attrition was preferred two-to-one over legalization.