Centerfield

yeah yeah we know. Republicans are SHOCKED!
SHOCKED I tell you, at illegal immigration.
Anger...but only angry enough to talk about it while the GOP accepts donations from farmers, food processors, building contractors and others who heavily rely on "illegal" immigrants to push down labor prices for the rest of our declining middle class.

I think Mitt is not so much a bigot as a panderer.

Well the Republican party has already shown xenophobia in the collapse of immigration reform. The Republicans defeated it... not the Democrats. Romney is simply appealing to the 'winning' side. Shameful? Yes. Shrewd? Yes.

I agree completely... let's just get rid of all immigration laws. Then there will be no more illegal immigration at all, and we'll never have to hear anybody say it's a problem again. What could go wrong?

Why am I agreeing with Marcus? Because he's mostly right.

Everytime the INS/ICE starts actually enforcing immigration laws by cracking down on the workplace, phones start ringing on The Hill, and it doesn't matter which party. Those donors whose bottom lines so depend on cheap labor raise a big stink, Congresscritters of both parties start telling INS/ICE administrators how their budgets will shrink if they don't lay off businesses in their district, and enforcement quietly goes back to border-only, lax as that is.

The only place I disagree with what Marcus said is his assigning of this behavior solely to the GOP. It's downright generic, and goes on nationwide. Those donors shovel out the money to incumbents. They don't give a hoot what party the recipient belongs to, as long as it produces results.

That Congress as a whole is willing to keep sucking on that teat is evidenced by the fact that any single part of the immigration bill could have been offered as a stand-alone by either party, and none were. The idea that they must all go through as a "package" is BS.

Well, there it is right there. Congress for the most part is uninterested in making the kind of change that (let's face it) many Americans want to undertake.

Let's all acknowledge the common ground that Tully and Marcus share. The immigration issue really isn't all that much of a "partisan" issue if you watch what congress DOES instead of what it says. Instead, it's an insider/outsider issue.

Matt, I'd like to think you could do better than to call Romney a BIGOT for representing the views of a substantial portion of the electorate. This classic 20th century framing wherein you're bigot if you want our laws enforced is, frankly, grotesque. You know I'm no Romney fan, but if he gains support for honestly representing the legitimate resentment of Americans for immigrants who flout our laws, then good for him.

It's the 21st century now, and I for one am not willing to let bigmouths yell me into silence by telling me I'm a bigot to want a coherent immigration policy. Every time the super-pro-immigration folks blithely play the BIGOT card to silence the legitimate concerns of folks concerned by an immigration policy that lacks coherence, they make an ugly populist backlash against immigrants MORE likely.

Riddle me this...When it comes to immigration, how come the "tolerant" folks are the ones doing all the name-calling?