"The unease over illegal immigration is, at its heart, cultural."

Jill Wilson

Columnist in the New Republic

Immigration reform remain an elusive idea.  The Dream Act failed late in the Democrat Congress of 2010 when 4 Democrat Senators voted against it.  Comprehensive Immigration reform has not been reintroduced since the plan proposed by George Bush in 2006 was soundly defeated.  His plan included an amnesty and a guest worker program and was therefore opposed by both extremes.  Now there is an attempt by Senator Marco Rubio to pass an incremental Dream Act that will almost certainly go nowhere.  It is being opposed by Democrats who would rather have a campaign issue than help some of the young people who are suffering from these odd laws.  And this mornings WSJ reported that two Senators are teaming up to try and get an expansion of the H1-B (skilled worker) Visa program added onto The Startup Act.  It will probably be defeated because Democrat Senators want to make an expansion of skilled worker visas part of a broad overhaul of immigration laws.

If this sounds familiar it should.  These are the same arguments and political manipulations that have been going on for the last twenty years.  The only thing that has changed is the facts on the ground.  The surge of immigrants from Mexico is almost over.  The lower birthrate in the USA has changed the economics of immigration and a generation of young people have grown up in cities with multicultural, cosmopolitian populations.  My prediction is that the days of immigration as a divisive political issue are coming to an end.