http://www.nationalreview.com/article/353148/political-train-wreck-mark-krikorian
Most of the Republican House members who gathered this week to discuss immigration understand that passing anything like the Obama amnesty bill would be politically harmful to them. Even Jay Leno has gotten knowing laughs with a crack about “undocumented Democrats.” Ann Coulter has written that “if illegals were Republicans, Chuck Schumer would be a ‘Minuteman,’ patrolling the Mexican border 24-7.”
The Left knows this too. Eliseo Medina, a top official with both the SEIU and Democratic Socialists of America, noted years before this particular bill was written that “immigration reform” is an important part of the statist project: “If we are to expand this [Hispanic] electorate to win, the progressive community needs to solidly be on the side of immigrants; that will solidify and expand the progressive coalition for the future.”
Even ostensibly neutral observers make the same point. As Politico noted earlier this year:
The immigration proposal pending in Congress would transform the nation’s political landscape for a generation or more — pumping as many as 11 million new Hispanic voters into the electorate a decade from now in ways that, if current trends hold, would produce an electoral bonanza for Democrats and cripple Republican prospects in many states they now win easily.
But the prospect of millions of new big-government, socially liberal voters is a cloud as small as a man’s hand. It’s serious, but it’ll be a while before it gets here. By contrast, passage of amnesty and expanded immigration will immediately create a political sky grown dark with clouds and wind for conservatism — among Americans who are already voters. It would be an electoral catastrophe for Republicans, who would look back with envy at Romney’s 27 percent share of Hispanic votes and last year’s 64.1 percent turnout among whites.