Prospects for immigration reform

Scott Keeter at the Pew Hispanic Center takes a look at the prospects for immigration reform in 2010. The main conclusion is that not much has changed. People support the idea of reform but are ambivalent about many aspects of immigration, while the issue is consistently viewed as less important than the economy, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.

A major unknown is how bloodied Obama emerges from the health care debate, because immigration reform will require a lot of luring and arm twisting. Further, Keeter notes the following:

More generally, partisan differences on the issue have grown since two years ago, potentially making it more difficult to achieve a consensus in Congress.

Since there is virtually no Republican leadership in Congress, we will hear quite a lot from Lou Dobbs, Sarah Palin, et al.