Let us be honest neither one of the parties wants to tackle the problem of Illegal immigration. But, it is much more likely to happen if the Democrats controlled both houses and the presidency. I have never been in favor of illegal immigration. I have seen American Citizens who have their jobs taken away because those people will do the jobs for less money. It is not uncommon to see first, and second-generation Latinos who disapprove of illegal immigration, even though they or their parents came here illegally. That is one of the reasons that Trump did fairly well down in the Rio Grande Valley.
I was a teenager when the farmer workers from the valley went on strike. The landowners would bring Mexicans to work the fields. Starting at age six or seven, every summer, I would go with my grandparents and pick cotton. I know what it was like to work from sunup to sundown, stooped over dragging a sack to could weigh up to one hundred pounds.
Below is a photo of my father and uncle during WWII. They had sent a letter to their father who lived in Roma, Texas. They forgot to add Texas so the letter got to Roma, Italia.
The photo on the left is of my Tio (Uncle) Libro; he was arrested over 20 times during the strike. My uncle Libro passed away last year.
Everyone seems to assume that all of us “Mexicans” are recent immigrants. Many of the old families from the valley were here before the gabachos came to Texas. My family, for example, can be found in the earliest United States Census. We have fought in all the major wars for the United States, including the Civil War, on both sides. My father and his brother spent four years in the Pacific Theater during WWII.
So it is hard for me to justify allowing people to come in when it will take jobs from people already here.
Besides, if Latinos want to have immigration reform, then they have to get themselves to the polls and vote straight Democrat. There are probably enough children of undocumented parents that were born here and have reached the age of eighteen that they can vote. I have spoken to the parents of such children and told them that they need to convince their children to vote. They could turn Texas blue if they did that, but I won’t hold my breath.
The closest that we have come to immigration reform was after the 2012 election, from the New York Times the following.
After the 2012 presidential election and a Republican autopsy that concluded the party had to shift its hard-line stance on immigration, momentum built for a compromise bill. On June 27, 2013, the Senate, voting 68 to 32, passed a compromise immigration bill addressing both border security and expanded immigration pathways, with 14 Republicans on board. But the G.O.P.-led House never acted on it.
What was proposed: A “Gang of Eight” group of senators — four Democrats and four Republicans — revived the idea of pairing border security measures with expanded immigration avenues, subject to meeting trigger thresholds on border security. The bill called for universal adoption of the employment eligibility system, known as E-Verify, to make it more difficult to hire undocumented workers and put most undocumented immigrants in the country on a 13-year pathway to citizenship. It would have awarded visas based on a points system, with about 50 percent based on job skills, and included temporary guest worker programs.
Why it failed: The bill easily passed the Senate but was effectively dead on arrival in the increasingly right-wing House. Speaker John Boehner, Republican of Ohio, repeatedly refused to give it a vote, saying he would not bring up an immigration bill that a majority of Republicans did not support.
So all those people that want immigration reform, you have a little more than a year to convince all those children of undocumented parents to vote and to vote for Democrats.