Interesting article from The New York Times ”The Border and the Ballot Box”
By DAVID LEONHARDT
On June 7 of last year, a bill to overhaul the nation’s immigration system — a bill supported by President Bush and the Democratic leaders of Congress — died in the Senate. It died mostly because of grass-roots opposition, and its downfall appeared to serve as an announcement of the issue’s new political potency. For much of 2007, immigration seemed certain to play a dominant role in the 2008 presidential campaign.
After the bill failed, Senator John McCain, the early Republican front-runner whose championing of the bill had made him look soft on illegal immigration, faded in the polls. The new Republican front-runners, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Mitt Romney, were trading accusations over who had been nicer to illegal immigrants in the past. “It’s been wonderful,” Representative Tom Tancredo, the most emphatically anti-immigration candidate, said during a Republican debate in November, “because all I’ve heard is people trying to out-Tancredo Tancredo.”
The backlash even had a familiar feel to it. In the last few decades, the country has experienced its fourth great immigration wave. Each of the other three — in the 1850s, 1880s and early 1900s — also caused a political reaction, the first and most famous being the rise of the Know Nothing movement. History looked as if it would repeat itself, albeit in a milder form, this year.
And so it has. It’s just that the lessons of the past aren’t quite what they first appeared to be. More