“Immigration is our strength!” Or so neoconservatives and mainstream Republicans have argued for 20 years. Hispanic immigration, especially. Mexican immigrants, neoconservative wisdom has it, are hardworking, entrepreneurial, religious, and dedicated to family values. Not only are they model American citizens waiting to happen; they are natural Republican voters to be encouraged, developed, and sent marching off to victory at the polls! In fact, these scores of millions of Julios and Rosas, Jésuses and Concepcións, Teodoros and Doroteas are the perfect stealth weapon by which to hoist those pandering Democrats on their own petard. The New Emerging Republican Majority, as overseen by a Spanish-speaking president from Tejas, would have a distinctly Aztec component. If, that is, Republican politicians were to refrain from “immigrant-bashing,” accept the immigrant invasion from south of the border (and elsewhere) as an unstoppable and essentially benign force of nature, and amnesty each and every invader who succeeded in hauling his carcass north of the Rio Grande.
Nativists and other naysayers insisted the scenario would not play out as written. Hispanics, they warned, despite certain conservative social instincts, being members of a minority race and belonging to a low socioeconomic class, are the natural prey of the Democratic machine. ...