Yes he has, because of the pressure that has been put on him to do so. The evidence of that is in his questionable early career as a legislator on immigration issues.
My first choice is always someone who arrives at the proper conclusions without political prodding.
But if the best we can do is a politician who fears for his political life, I'll take that. ;-)
It's always possible that a person does not realize just how bad the problem is, too. The Hispanic demonstrations changed a lot of folks minds about just how great were the threat of illegal aliens.
In honesty, I must count myself in that number, to an extent. I realized there was a problem in 1998, but didn't demand anything be done about it!