Senator John Cornyn, one of the most powerful Republicans in our nation's capital, recently tweeted that legal immigration should be "encouraged" while illegal immigration should be "deterred."
That attitude — which is shared by many Republican leaders — is the reason that once-reliably red states like Texas, Arizona, and Georgia could go blue today.
Decades of mass legal immigration, averaging about 1 million people each year during the 21st century, have brought in tens of millions of new voters. These naturalized Americans are largely patriotic, hardworking, and law-abiding. They're generally good people. But they're also quite liberal — which is why they overwhelmingly identify and vote as Democrats.
By welcoming in tens of millions of left-leaning future voters, GOP politicians are signing their own electoral death warrants. If the GOP wants to remain the party of limited government and still win elections, it has no choice but to scale back legal immigration.
Republican consultants have long argued that immigrants are more religious and more family-oriented than the general public — so they'd make natural Republicans, if only the party would adopt a more welcoming tone.
That's comforting rhetoric. It's also empirically wrong.
Study after study shows that immigrants reliably vote for Democrats not because they feel spurned by Republicans, but simply because they support Big Government. Much of the rest of the world has socialized health care and expansive welfare programs, so it's hardly surprising that immigrants would expect the same level of government largess once they move here.
Consider that 62 percent of immigrants prefer government-run health insurance systems, compared to just 45 percent of native-born Americans.
Immigrants skew liberal across the board, no matter their countries of origin. In 2010, 64 percent of immigrants from Latin America, 76 percent from Asia, and 69 percent from Europe and Africa supported Obamacare. Just 52 percent of native-born citizens favored the program.
This widespread support for Big Government explains immigrants' voting patterns. In Florida, a perennial swing state, 46 percent of immigrants identify as Democrats or Democrat leaners; only 26 percent identify as Republicans and Republican leaners. In Texas, the disparity is even worse. Forty-four percent side with Democrats; just 18 percent favor the GOP, according to Pew Research.
To understand what happens when you inject millions of Democrat-leaning voters into the electorate, just look at Virginia.
The Old Dominion was once ruby-red. It voted Republican in every presidential election from 1968 to 2004. And the GOP controlled the governor's mansion and both legislative chambers as recently as 2013.
But an influx of out-of-staters — including many immigrants — flipped the state deep-blue. In 1990, only 5 percent of Virginia residents were foreign-born. By 2018, that figure had climbed to 12.5 percent. Democrats now hold a trifecta, and recently used their power to expand Medicaid at enormous cost to taxpayers.
Even Texas could be at risk unless conservatives start to understand how the current immigration system is exploited by Democrats to secure their control of the federal government.
A few have tried. Senators Tom Cotton, David Perdue, Josh Hawley, and Marsha Blackburn have sponsored the RAISE Act, which would halve legal immigration numbers over the next decade. President Trump recently suspended most guest-worker visas, which bring in foreigners who can then seek employment-based green cards and, ultimately, citizenship.
But on the whole, most elected Republicans seem blissfully unaware of the electoral disaster that's unfolding. The United States naturalized more than 830,000 immigrants in 2019 alone.
If even half of them register to vote, and break for Democrats by a 2 to 1 margin, that nets Democrats an extra 137,000 votes.
For reference, President Trump won the 2016 election by a combined 77,000 votes across Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
Immigrants are overwhelmingly nice, hardworking folks. But many of them are disproportionately dyed-in-the-wool liberals when they come into the United States. That's why a 2014 Eagle Forum report warned that, "Because immigrants and their adult children overwhelmingly favor big government, there is no issue more important for conservatives than reducing the future number of legal immigrants allowed into the country each year."
There is good news, though. Immigrants tend to become more conservative in their voting the longer they live in the United States, and ascend the economic ladder. In order to allow immigrants already in the U.S. to prosper, there must be substantial reductions in future admissions.
Unless Republican leaders like Senator Cornyn heed that warning, they may soon find themselves in an unexpected early retirement — as they watch their life's work sacrificed on the altar of Big Government.
Cindi Castilla is President of Texas Eagle Forum. She lives in Dallas and previously served as President of Dallas Eagle Forum.