No. It's more than that.
Being an immigration hawk would be part of rebuilding the Democrats as the majority party.
New Democrat free trade economic policy never gave a damn about the economic interests of blue collar, non-college educated Americans. It only cared about urban knowledge workers. After all, couldn't all those displaced factory workers go to community college and study Visual Basic ? In NAFTA the Clintons were willing to betray their own base for a "victory" that profitted neither them nor the Democratic Party.
Blue collar Americans paid them back by voting their social conservatism. There weren't enough of them left in the Democratic Party to give Gephardt a chance. And he could have won in November. By turning their back on blue collar Americans the Dems lost the House, the Senate and mayoralty after governorship.
Hillary is smart enough to know that without economic populism the Dems have nothing to counteract "moral values". Gay marriage and abortion don't put food on the table. Rising wages for non college-educated Americans who no longer have to compete with illegals would. An anti-illegals, anti-outsourcing agenda would bring back blue collar voters who really did not benefit much during the 90's.
You could ask the moderator to change your ID to ShillForHill ...
Well as I said, I don't think for one moment that Hillary is at all serious about fighting illegal immigration. I think she is smart enough to know that she can talk tough on the matter (while the GOP leadership's rhetoric rarely strays from the nauseating PC platitudes that have somehow come to substitute for real debate), which will improve her standing with more moderate-conservative white voters who otherwise can't stand her. And she knows she can do this w/o fear of being tarnished and slandered as a racist/xenophobe/anti-immigrant bigot by the radical ethnic interest groups and the media because these groups will be on her side.
So she will get to have her cake and eat it too -- talk tough on illegal immigration like the people want w/o any downside that people like Tancredo suffer when they say the same things. Then if, God forbid, she gets elected she'll do nothing.