Only Nixon can go to China, and — according to Ruben Navarrette — only a Republican can do immigration reform.
I don’t necessarily agree with everything he writes, but I’ll agree to this extent: The next Republican president should do immigration reform.
This would include securing the border — and passing some sort of earned pathway to citizenship for immigrants who meet the appropriate criteria and are appropriately vetted. (It should also include policies to help immigrants be assimilated — to achieve the American Dream.)
It would be naive to suggest this would be a panacea, but it would head off the likely imminent situation, whereby future Republicans lose the Hispanic vote by catastrophic proportions. And let’s be honest: The liberal Democrats would HATE IT if Republicans were to outmaneuver them in such a way.
But even though this makes perfect sense — both from a policy and a political standpoint — don’t count on it happening. With all due respect to Navarrette, I can’t imagine a scenario where the GOP’s grassroots populist base would ever permit such a strategic maneuver to actually succeed.