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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsRepublicans Try To Rig The 2016 Election By Blocking LEGAL Immigrant Citizenship and Voting
Republicans Try To Rig The 2016 Election By Blocking LEGAL Immigrant Citizenship and VotingAccording to Politico:
It turns out that many Republicans consider legal immigration a more immediate and existential threat to the GOP than illegal immigration. While the total number of illegal immigrants is estimated at 11 million, there are more than 13 million permanent legal residents and that number could grow at a clip of a million a year.
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Conservatives have increasingly been raising the alarm about legal immigration as a more imminent threat to Republican power than any possible pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million undocumented people living in the U.S.
Just last month, immigration hard-liner Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) called for reducing the number of green cards issued each year, warning that the government is on track to allow 10 million new permanent residents into the country over the next 10 years. While his analysis focused on what he considered the potential negative economic impacts, the political implications were unsubtly telegraphed in the states cited to put the 10 million figure into perspective: The new residents would be larger than populations of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina combined.
The Republican objection to immigration is about keeping the electorate small, white, and conservative. ..........
pampango
(24,692 posts)in self government.
Many have thought that republicans have a long term strategy on immigration. They have focused on illegal immigration for years since legal immigration has historically been quite popular. By constantly linking 'immigration' to 'illegal' and 'bad', their nativist faction thinks they can go after legal immigration in the longer run.
It is similar to their strategies on welfare and public education. First you spend years discrediting welfare with complaints about 'welfare queens'. Then conservatives can go after the safety net as a whole once 'welfare' is discredited. They spent years discrediting public education with complaints about "failing schools" and "teacher unions". Then they go after public schools and come up with charter schools and vouchers for private schools.
If they do the same with immigration, they succeed in keeping the electorate small, white, and conservative.