The tenor of the debate among elite Republicans on immigration reform goes something like this. They try to pretend it isn’t political and they debate the merits of creating a whole bunch of new Latino citizens. Then they talk about how they need to be more welcoming to Latinos as a party. And then they realize that Latinos won’t vote for them even if they pretend to be nice. So, in the end, they reject immigration reform because they think it will make it harder to win elections. It’s always all about elections, and they assume that the Democrats only want immigration reform so they can get more voters.
Here’s the first thing the elite Republicans need to do. They need to sit down and ask themselves why they have become a party of racist assholes. Then they have to consider the possibility that it sucks to be a party of racist assholes. The Democrats discovered this forty years ago, and they did something about it. They passed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts and let Nixon have the racist assholes.
LBJ knew he was giving the South away for several generations. He did the the right thing anyway. It’s time for the GOP to split with its racist assholes even if that means they can’t win any elections for a while.
A party based on white supremacy, xenophobia, militarism and corporatism is not a pleasant thing. We fought a major war to crush a party like that. You can look it up.