Republicans on immigration

Newt Gingrich was open about how he disagrees with the restrictionist wing of the Republican Party. From yesterday's debate:

"I don't see how the party that says it's the party of the family is going to adopt an immigration policy which destroys families that have been here a quarter century," Gingrich said at the CNN debate on foreign policy in Washington, near the White House. 

"And I'm prepared to take the heat for saying, let's be humane in enforcing the law without giving them citizenship but by finding a way to create legality so that they are not separated from their families," Gingrich said. 

The former House speaker said recent immigrants should be sent home if they are found out, but "if you've been here 25 years and you 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."

Good for him. As I've written before about Perry, you can win the Republican nomination even without catering to restrictionism--immigration is not nearly as salient a topic as the media likes to claim. Gingrich has next to no chance of being that person, but in fact the view laid out above is pretty much identical to Ronald Reagan, who given many public statements on the matter would clearly disagree with the Republican base on immigration.