Immigration Reform In 2010?

by Patrick Appel

DiA sizes up the politics of tackling immigration in an election year:

[M]aybe introducing an immigration bill in spring 2010 and having it dominate the headlines in the summer of a mid-term election year would be great for Democrats. As the Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court confirmation battle showed, the overwhelmingly white conservative core of the Republican Party can be reliably counted on to go absolutely crazy over anything connected to racial diversity and the fossilised remains of the issue formerly known as "political correctness". It's true that immigration reform caused George Bush immense political trouble in 2006. But the reason why it caused him trouble was that it caused a far-right revolt among white conservatives, whose racially tinged invective devastated Republican Party support among Hispanics. Mr Bush's immigration reform efforts were excellent politicsfor Democrats.