David Frum is a former special assistant to George W. Bush and a frequent political commentator who maintains a popular online community, FrumForum.  In a recent CNN column, he weighs in on the heated immigration debate, siding with Mitt Romney in opposing Newt Gingrich’s recent assertion that some form of a legalization program must be coupled with continuing enforcement.  The following is my reply.

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I believe Gingrich is more right and Romney (and Frum) are more wrong here. There will have to be compromise in this legislation. There are very few absolutes in U.S. immigration.

Gingrich doesn’t deny that enforcement is a two-pronged approach, part securing the border, part employer sanctions.

The guest worker issue likewise requires a duality of approach that doesn’t cater to absolutist socioeconomic principles. We must address low-skilled workers, the poor tired huddled masses (as it were – now more like the guys hanging around Home Depot) as well as the engineers and scientists so valued by the business community and research institutions.

Current low-skilled guest worker visa programs that are tied to seasonal or agricultural employment are not the problem. Existing J and H categories (exclusive of H-1B) will have to become part of the solution, tweaked, bifurcated and expanded somehow to provide a semi-orderly transition from the past to the future for working illegals who would otherwise have no basis to qualify for a legalization program. Frum and Romney apparently dismiss this technocratic approach entirely, until the border is secure, and they’re wrong. First build the roads, then build the towns. Colonials had the luxury of vice versa; we no longer do.