Three key conclusions emerge from this analysis:
First, the enormous flow of legal immigrants in to the country — 29.5 million 1980 to 2012 — has remade and continues to remake the nation's electorate in favor of the Democratic Party.
Second, the partisan impact of immigration is relatively uniform throughout the country— from California to Texas to Florida — even though local Republican parties have taken different positions on illegal immigration. The decline does not seem to vary with the local Republican Party's position on illegal immigration.
Third, if legal immigration levels remain at the current levels of over one million a year, it will likely continue to undermine Republicans' political prospects moving forward. Further, if the substantial increases in legal immigration in Senate's Gang of Eight bill (S.744) were to become law it would accelerate this process. Conversely, lowering the level of legal immigration in the future would help stem the decline in the Republican vote.
Three related findings help explain why immigration reduces the Republican vote:
Immigrants, particularly Hispanics and Asians, have policy preferences when it comes to the size and scope of government that are more closely aligned with progressives than with conservatives. As a result, survey data show a two-to-one party identification with Democrats over Republicans.
By increasing income inequality and adding to the low-income population (e.g. immigrants and their minor children account for one-fourth of those in poverty and one-third of the uninsured) immigration likely makes all voters more supportive of redistributive policies championed by Democrats to support disadvantaged populations.
There is evidence that immigration may cause more Republican-oriented voters to move away from areas of high immigrant settlement leaving behind a more lopsided Democrat majority.
Thanks.
As an aside, I would add that conservatives in this country have to make a conscious effort to break away from leftist immersion, what they get in schools, through the news and entertainment media, pop culture and politics. Identifying with conservative values personally doesn’t mean those values will transition into cultural and political identification. People have to take the red pill to wake up in reality.
This goes along with what you are saying, that no matter the personal values immigrants bring with them, they are immediately taken into the redistribution system. They are inundated with leftist news, leftist entertainment, and leftist indoctrination into American culture. Unless they realize the extent of the brainwashing program they have entered, and choose their conservative values to drive their reasoning, immigrants are going to be absorbed into the leftist mainstream.
One thing is for certain. Republicans aren’t going to persuade Hispanics to break away from the leftist mainstream by pushing amnesty. It’s cliché to say that Republicans need to be smarter than that, and that they need to communicate better, but the fact is, mainstream Republicans haven’t made the conscious effort to break from the leftist mainstream. Republicans need to make the break to conservatism before they can convince anyone to leave the left.