Republicans and immigration

[ButterflyBlood]

here's something to bring up in light of Bush's policy that I didn't really understand, why is it that the Republicans that are softest on immigration aside from NE moderates, are usually ones from the southwest and border states? While lurking on FR I've frequently seen them whine about McCain, Kolbe, Flake and Republicans from New Mexico and SoCal being soft on immigration and sponsoring bills allowing easier visas and green cards for illegal immigrants, blah blah blah. Even Tom DeLay's record on immigration is a bit less neandrathalic than some of his collegues up north. In 2002, he voted the American Conservative Union position on their 25 selected issues 23 times. one of the two where he didn't was a bill extending the amount of time illegal immigrants could stay in the US. It seems to me that coming from heavily Republican districts, they would have racist, freeperish constituenties that would care about this issue more than others and would demand they crack down on immigration, hence it seems Republicans from border areas should be the toughest on immigration. And they obviously aren't pleasing the freepers, so then why is this?

[drdigi420]

1. Because they make a killing off the profits

from exploiting the illegal immigrant workers.

Nothing to that end will change, now they just wont have to worry about the INS decimating their work crew and forcing them to pay a living wage for American workers.

[FloridaPat]

2. I have it all figured out. Here's the scoop

Bush has lost 3 million jobs since he's been in office - the worst since the depression. There are between 8-12 million illegal workers in the country - so let's round it out to 10 million. Bush gets his immigration bill passed and these 10 million are now on the books as workers. He just put 7 million new jobs into the economy. He is a genius. The people have to vote for him next time because his tax cuts created all these new job.