MANY REPUBLICANS in Congress oppose immigration reform for fear of it creating millions of new Democratic voters and putting the White House forever beyond the GOP’s electoral reach. “This is President Obama’s number one political agenda item because he knows we will never again have a Republican president, ever, if amnesty goes into effect,” Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) told World Net Daily, an online publication, in June.

That conviction helps explain the party’s opposition to a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. But there are at least two reasons to doubt the Republican assumption. One is that any plan with a chance of enactment will contain a very long timeline for naturalizing the nation’s 11?million illegal immigrants. Under the Senate bill passed in June, immigrants would have to wait 13 years to become citizens; under some House proposals, the wait would be even longer. It is folly to predict how the nation, let alone particular voting blocs, might tilt in the 2028 or 2032 presidential elections.



The second problem is the numbers themselves. Even if all 11?million of these people had magically been made eligible for citizenship — and, for those over 18, the vote — in time for last year’s presidential election, there is no evidence they would have had a major impact on the outcome or on Mr. Obama’s margin of victory in the electoral college.