GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions has pushed to reduce the number of legal residents allowed into the U.S.
Forget about undocumented immigrants for a moment, what about the 8.8 million immigrants residing here legally who are eligible for citizenship and, yes, voting rights? It's a demographic heavily populated by Latinos and Asians and the Obama administration is rolling out an initiative aimed at making them full-fledged citizens,
reports Sarah Wheaton:
It turns out that many Republicans consider legal immigration a more immediate and existential threat to the GOP than illegal immigration. While the total number of illegal immigrants is estimated at 11 million, there are more than 13 million permanent legal residents — and that number could grow at a clip of a million a year.
Most of those green card holders are already on a path to becoming citizens and voters, and their politics skew Democratic.
The White House’s “Stand Stronger” initiative, announced last week, aims to remove barriers for permanent residents to apply for full citizenship, including the right to vote. The White House and its partners are planning 70 outreach events in the first week alone, as well as 200 naturalization ceremonies that will induct 36,000 new citizens over the same period.
That potential influx of voters prompted the right-wing Eagle Forum to issue a paper last year titled, "How Mass (Legal) Immigration Dooms a Conservative Republican Party."
“Republicans can never turn liberal-leaning immigrants and their adult children into supporters of limited government faster than the current high level of legal immigration (one million a year) is bringing in new liberal voters,” the report warns.
Especially not when your 2016 front-runner is calling them "rapists" and "murderers."