If you read up on Rick Perry, one of the blocs opposing strong immigration control in Texas is the business community. Not big business, but small-medium business. This is the core constituency of the GOP. When it comes to business, a lot of these guys are “Tea Party” libertarians who oppose govt telling them they can’t hire competent people for the cheapest wage. They can foresee popular resentment of foreign workers waning when the economy improves, as it will- under the right administration. Besides, why impose a lot of background checks and other rules on business community when the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT won’t enforce the uS Constitution?
So what is a state governor supposed to do?
The “Tea Party” is not “one voice” on many issues. On immigration, they can’t have their cake and eat it too.
Converse, however, not true.
Most Tea Partiers are not businessmen looking to hire illegals so they can short their pay packets in thin months and pay them off the books, or using phony SSAN's.
Most Tea Partiers recognized the huge burden placed on States' budgets by large calls for social services and education from non-citizens who are not paying FICA in many cases, or whose slumlords are underreporting cash receipts to the State treasury.
Big population of illegals = big social budgets + cash economy + undercollection of lawful taxes = higher taxes for legal Tea Party citizens.
Texas in particular has been through the mill on this.
‘On immigration, they can’t have their cake and eat it too.”
I’m not sure what you mean by that observation. Can you elaborate for me?
You don't know anything -- and coming from Maryland, I suggest you worry about your own backyard. You think all the people who voted Rick Perry into office REPEATEDLY like all the money that has to come from their pockets to support social programs that benefit illegal immigration. Come down and live here in a border state and then you can start telling everyone how it is.
Part of the reason businesses tolerate illegal for cheap labor is the simple fact that between wage laws and other regulations, its so much more expensive to hire Americans.