Crunch time

It seems that next week the Senate will determine the shape of its immigration reform proposal. The politics are rather complex, as this article starkly shows.

The sticking point: Republicans are split. These paragraphs summ it up quite nicely:

For Republican presidential candidates, immigration offers up a difficult choice: Appeal to conservatives eager to clamp down on illegal immigration who could buoy your position in the primaries, or take a moderate stand to win independents and the growing Latino vote, which could be vital to winning the general election.

"The short-term politics of this are pretty clear. The long-term politics are pretty clear. And they're both at odds," said Mike Buttry, a spokesman for Sen. Chuck Hagel (Neb.), another potential GOP presidential candidate.

In other words, Republicans are tempted to use immigration as their new "Southern strategy", which paid handsome dividends for them over the last three decades. However, demographics argue that over the long-run turning Latinos into yellow dog Democrats is suicide for the GOP.

This situation explains why GOP extremists, like Tom Tancredo, are pushing for massive deportations. They know that this is their last chance: if they can't push the 12 million illegals out of the country, the political weight of Latinos will grow very quickly in the future, making it very unlikely that harsh reprisals will be taken against them.

Needless to say, I believe their efforts are doomed. The U.S. would lose its soul if it undertook massive deportations. Even in these troubled times, I don't believe most citizens, even conservatives, would be willing to make that sacrifice for illusory security