Immigration Chapter Needs Major Updates

"As more Hispanic immigrants and their children gain the right to vote in the United States, it has become clear that neither the Republican nor Democratic parties have an obvious edge. For example, although the Republican Party in California has been a voice for immigrant restriction, many recent Latin American immigrants with strong Catholic backgrounds gravitate toward its conservative social message (209-210)."

--Gregory Weeks, U.S. and Latin American Relations (2008)

Holy cow, talk about a poorly thought out sentence. I am starting work on the immigration chapter for the second edition and just came across it. But it's also a fascinating glimpse into how much has changed since the end of the Bush administration. I am guessing I wrote that sentence around 2006, a time when a conservative Republican president was fighting unsuccessfully--sometimes against conservative Democrats--for immigration reform. Some conservative Republicans were actually trying to hammer out plans that would include legalizing undocumented workers. Members of the RNC argued that Republican voters supported reform. Latinos had voted for Bush in large numbers. I overestimated the strength of those signals.

So there will be some serious rewriting in this chapter.