On Fox "Special Report" yesterday Mara Liasson said that the GOP could do amnesty without the "path to citizenship."
1) Rewarding illegal behavior leads to more of the same.
2) Huge entitlement costs to add to obamacare and a growing part of the voters who pay no income tax but want more from the government, plus legal family-based immigration.
3) Thinking about bigger guest worker programs without a "path to citizenship?" Anchor babies and the courts make that approach just a slower form of amnesty.
The only argument I could make to Hispanics who want amnesty, is that all these forms of amnesty amount to killing the golden goose for themselves eventually, but by the time they realized that it would be too late.
Congressional House Democrats would never go along with that and unemployment is too high for most Republicans to go for it now.
What she is missing is how to keep these people from being a net draw on the government =aid minus taxes: medicaid, public schools, food stamps, etc. I would make them prove they are in the group of people that are actually paying Federal income taxes (that 53%) , or boot them out. To be safe they should file W2 for >$70K of taxable income. You want them to make enough so income taxes bother them.