It is an assumption based on fact. Immigration, Political Realignment, and the Demise of Republican Political Prospects
"This Backgrounder examines the political implications of large-scale immigration. Between 1980 and 2008, 25.2 million people were granted permanent residency (green cards) by the United States. A comparison of voting patterns in presidential elections across counties over the last three decades shows that large-scale immigration has caused a steady drop in presidential Republican vote shares throughout the country. Once politically marginal counties are now safely Democratic due to the propensity of immigrants, especially Latinos, to identify and vote Democratic. The partisan impact of immigration is relatively uniform throughout the country, even though local Republican parties have taken different positions on illegal immigration. Although high immigration may work against Democratic policy goals, such as raising wages for the poor and protecting the environment, it does improve Democratic electoral prospects. In contrast, immigration may help Republican business interests hold down wages, but it also undermines the party’s political fortunes. Future levels of immigration are likely to be a key determinant of Republicans’ political prospects moving forward.
The latter point is critical, because this is where the Republicans can make some serious inroads among immigrants. Once these immigrants become "mainstream taxpayers," they are no longer reliable residents of the Democratic plantation. The Republican Party must figure out how to appeal to them.
You seem to believe that today's immigrants are becoming "mainstream taxpayers," which is patently false. They are mostly unskilled, low paid, and uneducated and are taking more from the system than they are contributing. 57% of immigrant headed households with children are on welfare. 25% of the adults lack even a high school degree. Every year we are bringing in thru our legal immigration policies hundreds of thousands of high school dropouts.
Poverty
• In 2010, 23 percent of immigrants and their U.S.-born children (under 18) lived in poverty, compared to 13.5 percent of natives and their children. Immigrants and their children accounted for one-fourth of all persons in poverty.
• The children of immigrants account for one-third of all children in poverty.
• Among the top sending countries, poverty is highest for immigrants and their young children from Mexico (35 percent), Honduras (34 percent), and Guatemala (31 percent); and lowest for those from Germany (7 percent), India (6 percent), and the Philippines (6 percent).
Educational Attainment
• Of adult immigrants (25 to 65), 28 percent have not completed high school, compared to 7 percent of natives.
• The share of immigrants (25 to 65) with at least a bachelor’s degree is somewhat lower than that of natives — 29 vs. 33 percent.
• The large share of immigrants with relatively little education is one of the primary reasons for their lower socioeconomic status, not their legal status or an unwillingness to work.
• At the same time immigration added significantly to the number of less-educated workers, the share of young, less-educated natives holding a job declined significantly. The decline began well before the current economic downturn.
Progress Over Time
• Many immigrants make significant progress the longer they live in the country. However, on average even immigrants who have lived in the United States for 20 years have not come close to closing the gap with natives.
• The poverty rate of adult immigrants who have lived in the United States for 20 years is 50 percent higher than that of adult natives.
• The share of adult immigrants who have lived in the United States for 20 years who lack health insurance is twice that of adult natives.
• The share of households headed by an immigrant who has lived in the United States for 20 years using one or more welfare programs is nearly twice that of native-headed households.
• The share of households headed by an immigrant who has lived in the United States for 20 years that are owner occupied is 22 percent lower than that of native households.
And most of the 40 million immigrants living in the US today (now one in 8 residents of this country compared to one in 21 in 1970) not counting their American born children favor Dems by two to one.
I'll take it one step further, too. One of the most dramatic shifts in American politics over the next few decades -- and it has already started -- will be the natural resentment that will build between recent immigrants and our nation's class of professional malcontents (the "47%") who will never get off the Democratic plantation. The GOP must figure out a way to build on this.
Most of the immigrants coming to this country are natural Democrats as they have been historically. In the past immigrants had higher levels of education compared to the native born and that goes back to the early 1900s. Today, that is not true. And we now have the welfare state. Households headed by a high school dropout receive three dollars in public benefits for every dollar paid in taxes and it doesn't matter if they are immigrants or the native born.
Milton Friedman said that, “You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.” We have both.
87 percent of the 1.2 million legal immigrants entering annually are minorities as defined by the U.S. Government and almost all of the illegal aliens are minorities. By 2019 half of the children 18 and under in the U.S. will be classified as minorities and by 2042, half of the residents of this country will be minorities. Generally, immigrants and minorities vote predominantly for the Democrat Party. Hence, Democrats view immigration as a never-ending source of voters that will make them the permanent majority party.
Since the 1965 Immigration Act, our pro-population growth immigration policies have fueled major demographic changes in a very short period of time. In 1970, non-Hispanic whites comprised 89 percent of the population; today they are 66 percent; and by 2042, they will be 50 percent. The Democrats, under the banner of multiculturalism and diversity, have forged a political coalition that depends on individuals coalescing around racial and ethnic identities rather than the issues. The continuing and increasing flow of minority immigrants, mostly poor and uneducated, provides a natural constituency for the Democrats, which see them as their principal source of political power.
We have now reached a tipping point that has allowed a failed President to be reelected. Immigrants have provided the margin of victory.