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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.