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The familiar reasons usually discussed by the critics were there: Democrats wanted increased immigration because Latin American immigrants tend to vote Democrat once naturalized (we did not meet a single Democrat that was openly against mass immigration); and Republicans like immigration because their sponsors (businesses and churches) do. But there were other, more nuanced reasons that we came upon, usually not discussed by the critics, and probably more difficult to detect without the type of access that we, as a Mexican delegation, had.

These things are not equal, the question is why do Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians support policies that are suicidal to their beliefs.

While I can recall many accolades for the Mexican immigrants and for Mexican-Americans (one white congressman even gave me a "high five" when recalling that Californian Hispanics were headed for majority status), I remember few instances when a legislator spoke well of his or her white constituents. One even called them "rednecks," and apologized to us on their behalf for their incorrect attitude on immigration. Most of them seemed to advocate changing the ethnic composition of the United States as an end in itself.

While personal profit and class interest are important and shouldn't be dismissed, in this paragraph is the main answer. The chief identifying characteristic of the dominant modern left is white-hating racism. One of the main short-term benefits for Republican leaders not mentioned by the author is that supporting mass third world immigration is a shield against being called racist by their liberal masters. And that fear can't be separated from the 24/7 hate spew against whites that comes from the media and academia.

It should be said that anti-immigration is mostly a political loser, it has no short-term benefits for most politicians and you can't get most of its opponenets to vote for it when it really counts. Why is that? One reason is that the consequence of many radical political and cultural decisions are delayed for years, decades, or even centuries and it's easy to procrastinate on them. The full effect of today's immigration won't kick in until the immigrants start taking political power, and that's manana. Another reason is that because America is such a huge country Americans believe they can always flee to another part of the country if local conditions get too bad, the "white (and other) flight" option that allows them to escape their inaction. But mostly it is a matter of Pavlovian conditioning on the issue of race that makes people fall on the floor, curl up into a ball, and start sucking their thumbs. No one wants to be thought of as a "redneck" racist, as the Congressperson above so generously put it, and the pro-immigration forces play on that conditioning whenever immigration comes up for a vote.