Newt Gingrich’s proposal for local citizen juries to decide which of the individuals illegally in the country gets to stay is of course nuts.  Why even discuss it?  The arguments against it are monumental.  The idea is being laughed at across the board and it shows one of the reasons Gingrich would be an excellent choice for Republicans to nominate as their candidate for president – if they want to lose in a landslide.

Gingrich as the GOP nominee would be the kind of lottery ticket President Obama deserves to win given the bad straws he drew coming into office: A horrific economy and two costly wars.  One bad economy would have been enough.  One costly war, too.  But a bad economy and two expensive wars?  Obama on election night won the doomsday trifecta.

Gingrich’s proposal got me to thinking what it is, exactly, that the country wants done about the persons who are violating the law by being in the country without proper authorization.  Their number is said to range from 10 to 12 million.

We know that a significant number of Americans want all of them returned to their country of origin.  This is of course impossible, for logistical reasons but more so because it would devastate the economy and because the business establishment would help defeat so dim-witted a proposal.  On the other side, equally adamant proposals for complete amnesty hold their ground.  What to do?

The Gingrich immigration dust-up reminded me of the time not too long that a friend in New York called me.  A friend of a friend of his (all non-HispanicLatinos) wanted me and other friends to send in lottery tickets for an individual from Holland who wanted to become an American.  The more testaments he got, the greater his chances to win.  He won one of the slots in the lottery and is a creative and productive member of society.

My mind recalled the time my own fate was decided by a lottery.  It was a cool night in 1970, when a group of us trod over to the journalism building at the University of Texas in Austin.  There, a list of numbers would be posted that would be decisive in our lives.  President Nixon had decided to overcome opposition to the military draft by dumping all the days of the calendar into a pot so that our birthdates would be the controlling factor.  A national lottery was held so that every day was ranked by chance.  Those drawn at the top were then more likely to be drafted.  My birthday was well on down the list.

We walked back to the dorm knowing that we could go one with our lives and not fear being sent to Vietnam or consider fleeing to Canada as others had done.  I had resolved that if my number were called, I would not go to Canada.  It would not be fair to the three young men in Vietnam who were dating three of my sisters and would become my brothers-in-law in due time.

But that night, I was relieved.

Perhaps it is time for another national lottery, this time to decide which of the many millions in the country illegally can stay.  In the current stalemate, no one wins and we run the greater risk that if Gingrich himself somehow beats the odds and became President we would all be losers on a grander scale.

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