How Immigration Reform Could Split the Right

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently declared that Democrats would take up immigration reform "this year," defying the conventional wisdom that the issue is too perilous for the party to push during an election year. But maybe it's Republicans who should be nervous—because a high-octane immigration fight could drive a wedge between the Republican Party and the Tea Party right.

"It becomes a very explosive argument when you talk about legitimizing immigrants," says retired GOP Rep. Tom Davis, the former chair of the National Republican Campaign Committee. "From a Republican point of view, there is a dilemma."
The Republican Party got badly burned when Congress last considered immigration reform in 2006. Some GOP legislators, including Sen. John McCain, championed a bipartisan bill that would have provided a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants. But this proposition outraged the conservative base, who decried it as an "amnesty" for law-breakers. The right-wingers won the day—their attacks torpedoed the legislation. But this victory came at a cost. George W. Bush had worked hard to woo Latino voters, hoping to bring them into the GOP fold. In the 2008 presidential election, however, Latinos flocked to vote for Obama. Such fights "underscored their divisions—between their rural and conservative blue-collar supporters and their more business-oriented and pro-trade segments of the party," says Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg. And the party has yet to recover from the fallout. "Republicans ought to be embracing them instead of chasing them away," says Davis, referring to immigrants. "It hasn't. It’s gone from bad to worse in some ways."

The emergence of the Tea Party has only widened this rift within the conservative movement. Perhaps the person who best illustrates the division is former House majority leader Dick Armey, a vigorous proponent of immigration reform. Armey, however, is also the head of FreedomWorks, which has played a key role in organizing the Tea Partiers—whose activists can regularly be seen bearing signs with nativist slogans at their rallies. In fact, a group called "Tea Partiers Against Amnesty" is organizing protests across the country this week.


http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/04/how-immigration-could-splinter-right

Many of the Republicans most regular small contributors Framers and small business owners need and want their work force legalized.

The fact is that a significant portion of the agricultural ecoomy ( as well as some service sectors like restaurants) would collapse without this labor.

that's why they oppose vehemently a legalization of illegal workers.

...as we used to say years ago. Absolutely. The weaker the right, the better!