You are assuming that legal immigrants will be from Mexico and points south. This is not necessarily the case if the US stops illegal immigration and operates a skills based immigration system and makes sure that legal immigrants come from around the world so that you don’t have half the population from one fairly dysfunctional nation.
This in effect was the reponse in the 1920s to World War II after the population became alarmed at the flood of (legal) immigrants at the turn of the century.
I’d be all for having the levels of immigration we had from the late 1920s to about 1970, when the effects of several restrictionist laws we in force and before Ted Kennedy’s fraudulent 1965 reform bill took effect. That would be about 200,000 per year, I believe.
I am assuming that the biggest part of legal immigration will be from Mexico and other such nations. That is true. But that huge influx will continue so long as never-ending, extended-family chain migration is allowed to continue. Even if all the visas from an increase in legal immigration went to those coming in a skills-based point system, you’d still have an overwhelmingly pro-Democrat influx from the chain migration. I seriously doubt that the skills-based immigrants would break for the GOP any where near enough to off-set the Dem advantage from chain migration.
And that gets back to one of my original points. Why do people like Giuliani automatically call for an increase in the overall inflow? Why not first cut from existing streams of immigration and allocate those visas to a point system? I’d guess that such an idea has never even crossed Giuliani’s mind, and I’ll bet part of the reason for that is, again, his own family’s immigration story. Afterall, if his family was allowed to come, then why not every family on earth that wants to? Its an absurd way to think about it, but many do think in such irrational, crazy ways.
Finally, I’ll say that it is my belief that it would be almost impossible to have high levels of legal immigration and it not benefit the Democrats. I think you’d be hard-pressed to construct a policy that admits upwards of a million people per year, or more, and not have it break for the Democrats. Where in the world could you find a large perpetual stream of people naturally inclined to vote Republican? American conservatism is unique.
On that last point, I want to make clear that I am doubtful that the GOP can benefit from any policy that allows high levels of legal immigration, even if all or most of it were skills-based.
In the current political climate you've got better odds of sprouting wings and flying. We can't even get them to stop the anchor baby bandwagon.