Republican donors with a disproportionate influence in the party would be perfectly happy to jettison the cause of immigration enforcement. They are fine with a flood of low-skilled immigrants competing with low-skilled American workers. And why shouldn’t they be? These immigrants don’t suppress their wages; they care for their children and clean their pools.
Whenever it is pointed out that illegal immigration tends to harm low-skilled workers already here, the comeback is the scurrilous canard that there are “some jobs that no Americans will do.” But most hotel maids, construction workers, coal miners and workers in meatpacking — all tough, thankless jobs — are U.S.-born. If it is hard to entice legal workers into such positions, here is a radical concept: pay them more.
None of this is to deny that the GOP has a tonal problem on immigration or that Latino voters care deeply about the issue. But amnesty isn’t a quick fix for the party’s problems. Would that it were.
