THIS IS WHY:

There are roughly 8,000,000 (8 million) illegal/undocumented immigrants WORKING in this country.  They work in restaurants. They work in hotels and in the hospitality industry.  They work in domestic services.  They work in the construction trades.  And they work in agriculture.  Contrary to what many people seem to believe, they also pay taxes.  They perform jobs that most of us would refuse to do — let alone perform them at the low wages these workers are often being paid.  

Crime rates for illegal immigrants are also a fraction of what they are for U.S. citizens.  You wouldn’t know that by listening to the fear mongering that runs rampant on talk radio, social media and Fox News — but it’s true.  And it’s not hard to figure out why: illegal/undocumented immigrants do not want to draw attention to themselves.  They know that if they were to commit crimes — even among themselves— they would be discovered and deported with no opportunity to ever legally return and become a U.S.citizen. 

If every one of them were to be deported tomorrow, huge swaths of our economy would be significantly impacted and the U.S. would face a major economic crisis without their daily contributions.   The answer, instead of demonizing them and forcing them to live in the shadows, is to give them a pathway to citizenship just like we have to so many immigrants in the past. 

 

The problem with that, in particular, is that Republicans have been demonizing immigrants for decades and using them as the bogeymen in an attempt to scare voters into voting for Republican or anti-immigration candidates.  

Despite repeated claims to the contrary, illegal/undocumented immigrants are not U.S. citizens and therefore cannot vote in our elections.  But If they were allowed to become citizens, they would be able to vote.   And that is a problem for Republicans because they know full well that, after having demonized these people for decades, the vast majority of them would vote against Republican candidates.

And that’s the crux of America’s problem.  That’s why this country has not been able to pass long-needed immigration reform for decades.  If we ACTUALLY want to fix this problem, we can.  But it entails giving these people who we and our economy depend upon, a pathway to citizenship.  

Republicans would most likely pay a political price for that.  That’s why we don’t have it.