Republicans Have Little Incentive To Move Forward On Immigration Reform

Despite conventional wisdom, there remains little incentive for the GOP to change its position on immigration reform.

border-immigrants-crossing

The New York Times repeats an argument that has been made several times since the 2012 by Republicans and Democrats alike, and even more so over the past year as Republicans in Congress have blocked any effort to pass immigration reform, namely that the GOP is harming itself with its current position on an issue that appeals to growing segment of the electorate and that the party’s fortunes depend on changing course:

WASHINGTON — New Hampshire has one of the smallest populations of illegal immigrants in the country. Only about 5 percent of its 1.3 million residents are foreign-born, and 3 percent are Hispanic.

But tune into the Senate race between Scott P. Brown, the Republican, and Jeanne Shaheen, the Democratic incumbent, and you might think the state shares a border with Mexico, not Canada.

When someone called a talk radio show to ask Mr. Brown about global warming the other day, Mr. Brown immediately started talking about border security. “Let me tell you what I believe is a clear and present danger right now,” he said, brushing aside the caller’s concerns about the environment. “I believe that our border is porous.”

Footage of agents patrolling the rocky, arid Southwestern landscape is featured in Mr. Brown’s ads — not quite the piney highlands of New Hampshire.

A political group led by prominent conservatives like John R. Bolton, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations, attacked Ms. Shaheen last week with a video that juxtaposed two alarming images: a horde of people rushing a fence, presumably along the Mexican border, and a clip of Islamic militants right before they beheaded the journalist James Foley, a New Hampshire native. The ad was pulled after the Foley family complained.

Republicans have long relied on illegal immigration to rally the conservative base, even if the threat seemed more theoretical than tangible in most of the country. But in several of this year’s midterm Senate campaigns — including Arkansas and Kansas, as well as New Hampshire — Republicans’ stance on immigration is posing difficult questions about what the party wants to be in the longer term.

Some Republicans are questioning the cost of their focus on immigration. Campaigning on possible threats from undocumented immigrants — similar to claims that President Obama and the Democrats have left the country vulnerable to attacks from Islamic terrorists and the Ebola virus — may backfire after November. At that point, the party will have to start worrying about its appeal beyond the conservative voters it needs to turn out in midterm elections.

“You should never underestimate the ability of the Republicans to screw something up and blow an ideal opportunity,” said Ralph Reed, an influential conservative who has battled with hard-line Republicans to take a more charitable view on immigration.

“There is a sense in which, I think, the overwhelming desire to gain control of the Senate has kind of so fixated the party’s strategic brain trust that trying to get a hearing on long-term strategic issues doesn’t seem to be possible at the moment,” he said.

Still, immigration could be important to voters in states that do not have significant immigrant populations, and that seems to be the calculation of the campaign of Mr. Brown and others.

Much of the harsh talk on immigration today may have to do with simple math. In the states that Republicans need to win to retake the Senate, Hispanics are a sliver of the electorate. Nationally, they make up 11 percent of eligible voters. But in the eight states with close Senate races, fewer than 5 percent of eligible voters are Latino, according to a new Pew Research report.

Colorado is the only state with a competitive Senate race where Hispanics make up a significant share of the electorate — 14 percent. As a result, Republicans there have steered clear of making immigration policy an issue. Faced with polling that showed immigration could help Representative Cory Gardner, the Republican Senate nominee, strategists there still decided not to focus on it.

This strategy, of course, runs counter to the arguments that pundits have made ever since Mitt Romney lost the 2012 Presidential election and received just 27% of the Latino vote, less than the 31% that John McCain had received four years earlier, and far less than the 44% that George W. Bush had garnered in 2004. By and large, analysts ascribed this steep drop in Latino support for Republicans to the fact that the party’s support for immigration reform, which had reached its apex during Bush’s second term when the President, McCain, and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham were among the most prominent voices behind a comprehensive immigration reform proposal that likely would have been adopted but for the opposition of hard-line conservatives who went to war against all three and ended up having enough clout in Congress to bring the entire effort to enact the first real immigration reform plan in twenty years crashing down. In its wake, the Republican Party has come to adopt more and more the rhetoric and the policies of the wing of its party that helped bring about that defeat. At the state level, Republican politicians in states such as Georgia, Alabama, and Arizona adopted controversial immigration laws that, especially in the case of Georgia and Alabama, ended up having exceedingly negative consequences. At the national level, most Republican members of the Senate opposed any effort to enact immigration reform and Marco Rubio saw his star fall among the Tea Party crowd for his decision to back the bill that was ultimately passed. That bill has languished in the House, however, and seems destined to die at the end of the Congressional term notwithstanding the support of groups like the Chamber of Commerce for some kind of reform and at least some signals from House leadership that they would like to see a bill make it through the House on this issue. Beyond the legislative action and inaction, though, the GOP has largely adopted the rhetoric of the hard right on immigration, denouncing anything that resembles legal relief for undocumented workers and repeating mantras about “border security” that, when you examine them in detail, are rather meaningless and pointless.

All of this has led many Republicans, from Rubio and Jeb Bush to the Chamber of Commerce and other members of the business community and even the GOP’s own post-2012 audit, to argue that the party needs to reconsider its position on immigration issues or otherwise doom itself to electoral disaster in the future, especially at the Presidential level, thanks to the rising importance of the Latino vote in a large number of states across the country.  As Nate Cohn notes, though, the actual pressure on Republicans to reconsider their positions on immigration are far less immediate than they might seem:

There’s a simple reason that congressional Republicans are willing to risk alienating Hispanics: They don’t need their votes, at least not this year.

Republicans would probably hold the House — and still have a real chance to retake the Senate — if they lost every single Hispanic voter in the country, according to an analysis by The Upshot.

Such a thing would never happen, of course, but the fact that the Republicans may not need a single Hispanic vote in 2014 says a good deal about American politics today.

The fact that the Republican House majority does not depend on Hispanic voters helps explain why immigration reform has not become law, even though national Republican strategists believe the party needs additional support among Hispanic voters to compete in presidential elections. It’s true that Republicans would stand little, if any, chance of winning the presidency in 2016 if they lost every Hispanic voter. If anything, the Republicans probably need to make gains among Hispanic voters to compete in states like Florida and Nevada.

But Congressional elections are different. Although the young, urban and racially diverse Democratic coalition has won the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections, that coalition has not delivered House control to the Democrats. Gerrymandering isn’t the only cause, either. It’s the way the population is distributed.

Even a situation in which every Latino voter in America chose the Democratic candidate would mainly allow Democrats to fare better in the heavily Hispanic districts where the party already wins.

(…)

In reality, the Republicans will win millions of Hispanic votes this November. But the House Republican majority does not depend on those votes. Indeed, it could even withstand losses far beyond reason.

To win the White House in 2016 or any future year, the Republicans will need a substantial number of Hispanic votes. But the fact that the party doesn’t need many of those votes to hold the House makes the Republican effort to appeal to Hispanic voters far more challenging. The Republican Congress has few, if any, immediate incentives to reach a compromise on immigration reform or otherwise reach out to Hispanics.

For individual Republicans in Congress, supporting such measure would verge on the irrational. It would leave them vulnerable to primary challenges and offer little or no benefit in the general election.

In a nutshell, that largely explains why the House has not acted at all on immigration reform. Politically, there is very little incentive for individual members to stick their necks out on the line on the issue to begin with, and at least during primary season there are strong disincentives to do so in the form of potential primary challenges from the right that would have the backing of strong national forces behind them. To at least some degree, that is part of what played into the defeat of Eric Cantor in the Republican Primary earlier this year because there was at least the perception that, as part of the leadership, he was willing to compromise on the issue or even bring the full Senate bill to the floor for a vote, where it would likely have passed with the support of most Democrats and a small number of Republicans. The fact that Cantor has spoken sparingly in public on the issue didn’t matter as much the perception that he would stray on the issue if re-elected. Other Republicans running for re-election this year faced the same political calculus as Cantor did, and they will again in the future, which, along with the simple fact that House Republicans don’t trust the President to implement whatever they might pass without improvising via Executive Order, is the reason why we didn’t see any immigration reform before the election, why we’re not likely to see it in the Lame Duck session, and why it’s also exceedingly unlikely in the two year period prior to the 2016 elections. Indeed, any candidate running for the Republican nomination is going to face the same incentives from the base that Members of Congress do on this issue, which is why a candidate like Jeb Bush would face a hard road notwithstanding the fact that he would likely be backed by the party’s big money donors.

Even at the Presidential level, the pressures on the GOP to act on immigration seem to be far less than what many, myself included, have anticipated. It’s true, for example, that teh Latino voting age population is growing, but that’s only part of the equation. To be sure, Latino voters turned out in record numbers in 2012, but they still only amounted to ten percent of the total electorate, in no small part because overall voter turnout among this group continues to lag that of the general population. That could change if, for example, there were a Latino politician on a national ticket in 2016 or beyond, but it does show that Latino voting power is not as strong as the demographic trends might make it seem. Additionally, as Philip Bump and Francis Wilkerson argue, 2014 is likely to cement the GOP lock on the white vote, and as that population ages they become more likely to turn out to vote, and to vote Republican. In the short term, then, the incentives for Republicans to worry about appealing to Latino and other minorities Eventually, of course, demographic trends will catch up with electoral reality, but Bump and Wilkerson both make convincing cases that this may be much further off than conventional wisdom might lead one to believe. If their analysis is correct, then incentives for the GOP to listen to the anti-reform elements in their base will continue to be stronger than the incentive to promote immigration reform in an effort to appeal to Latino and other voters. If that’s the case, then the prospects for immigration reform in the short term would appear to be quite bleak.

 

FILED UNDER: 2014 Election, 2016 Election, Borders and Immigration, Congress, Environment, Race and Politics, US Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. superdestroyer says:

    There is not one poll, one political analysis, or one competent political scientist who has claimed that if the Republicans can out for open borders and the free movement of people between the U.S. and Mexico, that one Latino voters would switch their support to any Republican candidate.

    There are many reason for Latino voters to support the big government, big spending, liberal party. If Republicans try to chase after those naturally economic liberals, it gains them little but alienates large portion of current Republican voters. The NY Times wants the Republicans to sell out of immigrant because it will help Democrats and hurt Republicans. What the NY Times does not admit is that comprehensive immigration reform will also make it harder for the government to achieve many other reforms that the NY Times supports.

  2. al-Ameda says:

    It’s simple: Republicans want much more border enforcement, more fencing and walls from San Diego through Texas, more deportations, and no real path to citizenship for those who are here now.

    When that’s your Immigration Reform (slash) Hispanic and Latino Outreach Program you can see why Republicans would rather not talk openly about Immigration Reform – at least not until after the November mid-terms have passed.

  3. superdestroyer says:

    @al-Ameda:

    There is no way that the more conservative party can have a “successful outreach program” to Latinos. The conservative party can decide to stop being conservative and appeal to Latinos or to remain conservative. That is why the Republicans do not want to make a decision. Any decision they make will move the U.S. to the left.

  4. John425 says:

    @al-Ameda: My Hispanic friends in Texas do not want an open border situation either. They see the poor, native born Hispanics on San Antonio’s west side losing out to illegals who are undercutting them on wages. Why hire a registered lawn service who pay their workers a decent wage when you can get an illegal at half price?
    Are you going to demand proof of citizenship of an itinerant yard worker?

    P.S. Greg Abbott, (R) who is running for Governor is married to an Hispanic and Geo. P. Bush, son of Jeb, has a Hispanic mom.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latino_Republicans

  5. al-Ameda says:

    @John425:

    @al-Ameda: My Hispanic friends in Texas do not want an open border situation either. They see the poor, native born Hispanics on San Antonio’s west side losing out to illegals who are undercutting them on wages. Why hire a registered lawn service who pay their workers a decent wage when you can get an illegal at half price?

    My Hispanic friends and neighbors don’t want an open border either – who does? And in fact, we do not have that right now. We have deportations going on, and right now, because of increased border enforcement net immigration is negative – more leaving than coming. What my Hispanic friends and neighbors want is a reasonable path to citizenship – not the punitive 13 years and tax penalties that was on the table over a year ago.

  6. My Hispanic friends and neighbors don’t want an open border either – who does?

    *raises hand*

    I don’t believe the use of force to block people from peacably going about their business is legitimate.

  7. James Pearce says:

    As a result, Republicans there have steered clear of making immigration policy an issue. Faced with polling that showed immigration could help Representative Cory Gardner, the Republican Senate nominee, strategists there still decided not to focus on it.

    From a purely political perspective, this was a good call.

    I didn’t think Gardner had much of a chance, based on his flip-flopping over personhood, but his campaign seems to have Udall on the ropes. They’re hitting him over being soft on ISIS and now Udall’s been calling for an ebola travel ban.

  8. Tyrell says:

    Let’s think about what has been going on. The president talks about reform, but I have yet to see details. And what do we tell those who followed the procedures and had to wait their turn to come in ? “Sorry, you play by the rules, you lose”? We have seen people entering illegally, even by the busloads, only to be handled by politicians who treat them like a hot potato – “Come on in, just don’t stop in our state”. Politicians who pass any sort of immigration reform that gives a free pass should promise that they will take care of them in their state. See how that goes over.
    One idea would be to come up with a plan. And then let the people vote on it.
    “This field trip is over”

  9. KM says:

    @John425:

    Are you going to demand proof of citizenship of an itinerant yard worker?

    You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem. You’re hiring an “itinerant yard worker” why? Because you know damn well there’s a good chance they’re not here legally and you can be a cheapo under the table, skimping on wages and avoiding taxes. You wander the street and parking lots looking for someone to work for you instead of a fully licensed company? Cuz you’re cutting corners, doing things on the sly.

    It’s not the big evil companies driving this crap. It’s everyday people and small companies who are trying to get something for cheap, taking advantage of people but complain voraciously when flocks of people cross borders for the chance to be that guy you pick. Want to do your part to help secure the border? Stop looking for that type of financial transaction and encourage everyone you know to do the same. This needs to stop being socially acceptable in order to really make a difference – then and only then will you see a real effect on immigration.

  10. Davebo says:

    @Tyrell:

    How exactly does a immigrant who played by the rules “lose” in immigration reform? What exactly do they lose?

  11. Davebo says:

    @Tyrell:

    And they aren’t treated by politicians at all. They are handled by ICE and the EOIR. It’s politicians that have ensured neither ICE and especially EOIR aren’t funded as they should be. Hence a 4 year backlog in deportation hearings.

  12. CB says:

    You guys angling for draconian border security know that most illegal immigration is the result of overstayed visas, right?

  13. al-Ameda says:

    @Tyrell:

    Let’s think about what has been going on. The president talks about reform, but I have yet to see details.

    Actually, there was a bi-partisan reform package that was moving forward – the Rubio-Schumer Reform – that did not get to the floor for discussion because Republican leadership did not want it to.

    So, like everyone else on the Right, feel free to indulge yourself in the “blame the president’ exercise when it is quite clear which party is determined to obstruct immigration reform.

  14. Gustopher says:

    Perhaps Republicans could morph their incessant calls for Voter ID (which solves a problem we basically never see in real life) to calls for employers to actually require documentation that workers are eligible to work in this country.

    A nice outreach program to make sure people can get the right ID, a straightforward way to check validity, some fraud checks, and some tough penalties for employers including jail time.

    That would really cut down on the number of illegal immigrants.

  15. T says:

    @John425:

    Why hire a registered lawn service who pay their workers a decent wage when you can get an illegal at half price

    CURSE THAT INVISIBLE HAND!

  16. C. Clavin says:

    If your incentive to act is only, as Super-Dooper so aptly exemplifies, to generate votes…then there isn’t any reason to act.
    If your incentive to act is good governance, human decency, and boosting the gol’ danged economy…then there is plenty of reason to act.
    But that’s just crazy-talk.
    Sorry.

  17. C. Clavin says:

    @superdestroyer:

    The conservative party can decide to stop being conservative and appeal to Latinos or to remain conservative.

    That’s nonsense. Immigration Reform is a Conservative position. It’s not a Republican position. The two are very different. Stop pretending to be Conservative. You’re not.
    @John425:

    P.S. Geo. P. Bush, son of Jeb, has a Hispanic mom.

    And Jeb Bush enthusiastically supports immigration reform.
    It’s funny how you Republicanists soften your ideological stances once you meet someone affected by them…like Portman changing his mind about gay rights once he discovered his son is gay…or Ayn Rand signing up for Medicare the very second that she got cancer.
    Very funny indeed.

  18. gVOR08 says:

    Basically the Republican Party can choose to once again be a national party with, dare I say it, a Big Tent range of conservative and moderately liberal Republicans. Or they can continue to drift toward becoming a regional party, strong in the Confederate and Cowboy states, but only a rural fringe in the urban states. Looks like the later. I’d say they decided to go the regional party route, but I don’t think they have the mechanisms to make a decision, as opposed to each candidate going on his own. The RNC did a post-mortem and decided they had to reach out to Hispanics, remember? Any evidence the RNC has the power to make that stick?

    Given the makeup of the Senate and whatever the issues are in the House, they can continue to have a disproportionate, but shrinking, strength in Congress. Is that going to be enough for the Koch Bros and their ilk?

  19. Trumwill says:

    The coverage on the subject of the politics of immigration is one of the clearest examples of “What I want is good politics” I can name. With some pretty significant class implications along the way. The GOP is going to have to pick up votes from somewhere, but I just see very little indication that targeting Hispanics through immigration reform is a particularly efficacious strategy.

  20. stonetools says:

    The Republicans will win the Senate demagoguing immigration reform in 2014-but get creamed in 2016. The Democratic Presidential ticket might be Hillary Clinton-Julian Castro.

  21. superdestroyer says:

    @C. Clavin:

    Passing a piece of legislation that will increase government spending, increase the number of people eligible for affirmative action, increase the number of people competing for jobs will do little for the economic prospects for middle class Americans. However, it will reward the elites but lower the price paid for high tech workers and more automatic Democratic voters who will sustain the elites.

    Unless someone is willing to stand up in front of a crowd of middle class whites and lays out a review of how they will benefit from comprehensive immigration reform, then it makes complete sense for the Republicans and conservatives to oppose amnesty and slow motion open borders.

  22. superdestroyer says:

    @gVOR08:

    The actual decision is to try to either become the Democratic-Lite party, still not get any non-white votes, and quickly fade away, or they can remain as the middle class white party and let demographics overwhelm them. There is no path for the Republicans or conservatives to remain relevant in politics in the U.S. There only choice they have is in determining how they will fade away. Progressives keep pushing Republicans to become the Democratic-Lite party because it causes the failure to occur faster and thus, gets more benefits for progressives in a shorter time frame.

  23. Tyrell says:

    @al-Ameda: Thanks for the information, I will study it. I did like most of the “Dream” Act, with some tweaks. I voted for President Obama, so I feel I can criticize justifiably, if not always accurately. I am still waiting for a southern Democrat to run for president. Carter was the best since Johnson.

  24. C. Clavin says:

    @superdestroyer:

    Passing a piece of legislation that will increase government spending, increase the number of people eligible for affirmative action, increase the number of people competing for jobs will do little for the economic prospects for middle class Americans.

    Again…a Republican catechism with no basis in history or fact.
    Your entire world view is based on nonsense.
    Immigration reform will boost the economy…by huge numbers.
    Stop being a mindless bigoted dupe.

  25. bill says:

    @al-Ameda: we have a policy that was working, why the current admin decided to disregard it is pure politics. why do we need to import cheap labor when we have so many people out of the workforce already?(i don’t care if we import some skilled people to take jobs that Americans are too under educated to do)
    that we have people making enough money doing nothing is the real scam- and that just perpetuates the issue of rewarding people for doing nothing…..but voting.

  26. beth says:

    @bill: How was the policy working when we have less illegal immigration now than in the last administration? When was it working?

  27. Tillman says:

    @bill:

    why do we need to import cheap labor when we have so many people out of the workforce already?

    Because by and large Americans don’t want those jobs.

    @gVOR08: That disproportionate but diminishing strength will, thanks to how our system is set up, hamper any possibility of legislative rectification for our nation’s problems for the next foreseeable decade. I mean, it’s not something to dismiss off-hand.

  28. John425 says:

    @KM: FYI- I was describing things in San Antonio, Texas. I live outside Seattle, WA. You need to read ALL the words before you sound off.

  29. John425 says:

    @C. Clavin: Typical Clavin–when he has no argument he resorts to slurs and insults. Most likely he (or is it a she?) is a paid Democrat troll

  30. superdestroyer says:

    @Tillman:

    Once again, the idea that Americans are too lazy to do manual labor, too stupid to do high tech work, to demented to get married, to selfish to have children, and thus, must be replaced with third world immigrants, Stat!

    Why do progressives hate Americans so much that they want to replace them? Why do they detest the middle class that they want to make it much harder to live in a good neighborhood with good schools? Why do progressive believe anyone who did not attend an Ivy League schools should have to live in third world conditions to be able to compete for jobs?

  31. C. Clavin says:

    @John425:
    My argument is that immigration helps the economy…and it’s backed by Texas …and bi-partisan research.
    http://www.aei.org/speech/society-and-culture/immigration/immigration-and-its-contribution-to-our-economic-strength/#mbl
    Your argument is we need to stop immigration because brown people.
    If it walks like a duck………

  32. C. Clavin says:
  33. KM says:

    @John425:

    FYI- I was describing things in San Antonio, Texas. I live outside Seattle, WA. You need to read ALL the words before you sound off.

    I live near our northern “unsecured” border as well – what’s your point? If you think people taking advantage of immigrants is limited to a few hundred miles range of the Rio Grande, you are sadly mistaken. People go where jobs are, they’ll spread out across the country to where unscrupulous individuals in search of cheap labor wait. People up here don’t want competition from a cheap labor pool like that either. My uncle owns a HVAC service and is constantly running into competitors who hire illegal immigrants on the side to keep their costs down.

    You need to read ALL the words and THINK IT THROUGH first before you sound off.

  34. al-Ameda says:

    @bill:

    we have a policy that was working, why the current admin decided to disregard it is pure politics. why do we need to import cheap labor when we have so many people out of the workforce already?(i don’t care if we import some skilled people to take jobs that Americans are too under educated to do)

    We have a policy right now – no net increase in illegal immigration, deportments – that is working better than it did under successive Republican Administrations. Yet to hear you and other Republicans, Obama has opened the borders.

    The disinformation being propagated by Republicans is a real problem.

  35. Barry says:

    @Davebo: “And they aren’t treated by politicians at all. They are handled by ICE and the EOIR. It’s politicians that have ensured neither ICE and especially EOIR aren’t funded as they should be. Hence a 4 year backlog in deportation hearings.”

    What part of ‘deportation rates have increased’ do you not understand?

  36. Eric Florack says:

    …whereas The Democrats… Obama in particular, are being driven by their quest for a permanant majority.
    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/oct/20/editorial-green-cards-on-the-table/

  37. Eric Florack says:

    @al-Ameda: Obama has indeed opened the borders.
    Read, above.

  38. C. Clavin says:

    @Eric Florack:
    Dude…stop linking to extremeist opinion pieces from extremeist rags and presenting them as fact.
    A :30 second search found this:

    Under this program U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will offer certain eligible Haitian beneficiaries of already approved family-based immigrant visa petitions, who are currently in Haiti, an opportunity to come to the United States up to approximately two years before their immigrant visa priority dates become current.

    Very different from what you want to think.
    Of course Haitians are dark skinned so you find them icky.
    Too f’ing bad.
    I’ve spent a lot of time in Haiti…and I’d trade 100,000 of them for a bigot like you in a NY minute.

  39. beth says:

    @C. Clavin: I’m kind of wondering whether he had the same reaction when GWB did exactly the same program in 2007 for Cubans. Somehow it’s only lawlessness when Obama does it.

  40. Tillman says:

    @superdestroyer:

    Once again, the idea that Americans are too lazy to do manual labor, too stupid to do high tech work, to demented to get married, to selfish to have children, and thus, must be replaced with third world immigrants, Stat!

    Why do progressives hate Americans so much that they want to replace them?

    And you got all of that hate-spewing progressive talk from the simple phrase, “Americans don’t want those jobs,” eh?

    Besides, it’s the Chamber of Commerce, hardly a progressive organization, that wants to expand immigration for high- and low-skilled workers. Cheap labor, right?

  41. C. Clavin says:

    @beth:
    Cubans tend to be part of the Republican base…so they make allowances.

  42. al-Ameda says:

    @Eric Florack:

    @al-Ameda: Obama has indeed opened the borders.
    Read, above.

    Deportations up, net immigration is negative. Facts.

  43. superdestroyer says:

    @Tillman:

    Americans do not want to do jobs that are dominated by recent immigrants. The pay is lower and the conditions are perceived to be worse. Do you really want me to link to all the articles that claim that high tech cannot survive in the U.S. without a massive number of third world immigrants. CNN even did a report on how poor immigrants from Mexico can become engineers and Americans can be.

  44. Eric Florack says:

    @al-Ameda: Up, perhaps, but so too is the inflow.

    @C. Clavin: Next time, do a little more research than 30 seconds. Of course, to do that demands you question and possibly be forced to alter your leftist screed. The Washington Times? Extremist?

    You need help.

  45. Grewgills says:

    @Eric Florack:
    You do understand what “net immigration is down” means don’t you?

  46. C. Clavin says:

    @Eric Florack:
    You are in complete denial of the facts, as several people above have pointed out.
    And yes…the Washington Times is an extremist right- wing propaganda outlet.

  47. Just Me says:

    @Tillman:

    This isn’t true.

    In areas with high legal immigrants Americans don’t want those jobs for how much the pay is (large illegal immigrant presence delleesses wages).

    I live in a state with few immigrants (legal or illegal).

    Americans do yard work, Americans work construction, Americans do all those jobs. It’s not like nobody can find a landscaper or house cleaner because nobody is applying for the job. People do those jobs.

  48. Eric Florack says:

    @C. Clavin: as compared to what, pray? The WaPo?
    Hell, son, anything is right wing extreme compared to that.

    @Grewgills: Given that there is an issue with undocumented immigrants… that is, illegals, how would you know how many non-citizens we have here, how would we be able to prove that? And consider this, also…. given the number of half-truths and flat out lies being spread by the government on the subject, do you really trust the figures they feed you?

  49. Grewgills says:

    @Eric Florack:
    Well, there are the official numbers on our side and on your side… the numbers you pull out of your a$$. That you expect anyone to believe your made up situation with absolutely not one bit of proof over the official numbers because you shout conspiracy is comically ridiculous.

  50. Eric Florack says:

    If theyare undocumented, where are the governments numbers from?

    and by the way… I provided no numbers.@Grewgills:

  51. Grewgills says:

    @Eric Florack:
    You made an assertion that the inflow of illegal immigrants was up, while that is not a specific number it is an assertion that numbers are higher than they were previously. Despite being confronted with actual evidence that net immigration is negative, you assert the opposite, because… reasons. You have nothing but bald assertions based on completely unsupported conspiracy theorizing. In other words, even worse than your usual.

  52. Eric Florack says:

    @Grewgills: I thihink I see your perception problem.
    I was responding, remember to Clavins use of “open borders”

    You consider “open borders” to involve law, or in the case of Obola, an executive order, making immigration. Legal…. whereas I look at what actually happens….without border secuiity, the law (or XO) means nothing whatever.
    @C. Clavin: amazing how often you trot out the word “Bigot” like a shield. Its designed of course to remove all dissent.

    Its not working.

  53. Eric Florack says:

    Oh, by ththe way, @Grewgills:
    did you happen to check your AP wire, recently?

    http://news.yahoo.com/us-govt-seeks-supplies-immigration-documents-084707903.html

  54. Grewgills says:

    @Eric Florack:
    Which does not support your assertion of increased immigration. It is about increased processing of immigrants already here.

  55. Eric Florack says:

    @Grewgills: Oh, agreed.
    Yet, two points, and theybwould seem related.

    1: it shows an intent not to enforce the law.
    2: Do you really think this move, in combo with point one, isnt going to draw more illegals here?

    and as a bonus….

    How are they going to get here, except through the border this president has refused to secure? (and why would he be that way?… )

  56. Grewgills says:

    @Eric Florack:
    1) It shows intent to deal with Republican intransigence on comprehensive immigration reform through whatever executive action is legal.
    2) The employment situation will be the driver.
    You keep saying Obama has refused to secure the border despite being confronted on numerous occasions with evidence showing more border enforcement and more deportations than any previous president. I can only conclude that you either have no capacity to form new memories that do not comport with your political biases or you are hopelessly dishonest.