Alexander Ryking

[I]mmigration is no longer the key to the growth of the Mexican-American population overall, and it is even less important to the rise of Hispanics in the electorate. As Pew calculated in 2011, new immigrants accounted for only a little over one-third of the 11.4 million increase in the Mexican-American population from 2000 to 2010. By contrast, Mexican-American children born in the U.S. represented 63 percent of the group’s growing population over that decade.

Children born in America are citizens by birthright, whatever the immigration status of their parents. And it is those young people, far more than immigrants, who are expected to power the growth of the Hispanic electorate in the coming years…

Polls show President Obama, when matched against Romney, almost always equaling (if not exceeding) the commanding two-thirds of the Hispanic vote that he won in 2008. But disappointing Hispanic turnout could muffle the impact of that advantage. It also would likely tilt the GOP’s internal balance further toward conservative hard-liners on immigration. If Hispanic voters can’t impose an electoral price for the sort of aggressive policies that Romney has endorsed, the odds are high that more Republicans will also embrace them.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D) said on Sunday that an immigration proposal from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) would create a “second-class status” of people in the United States.

“I would support the president’s version of the DREAM Act,” Villaraigosa said, appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation…”

The Democratic version of the DREAM Act immigration reform plan would create a path to citizenship for some students who were brought into the country illegally as children. The bill failed to attract enough Republican support to clear the Senate in late 2010.

Rubio’s alternative, which he has yet to formally introduce, would [allegedly] give students legal status through non-immigrant visas, but not citizenship.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is angling to blame President Obama for the looming failure of his watered-down DREAM Act, and the White House is strongly objecting to that implication, insisting that Rubio’s problem is with his own party, not the president.

“The notion that somehow the president or Democrats would be the roadblock to any progress on immigration is ridiculous,” a White House official told TPM. “If this proposal fails, the reason will be the Republicans.”

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, denied Rubio’s charge that the White House has been “actively trying to torpedo my efforts” on a compromise DREAM Act, as Roll Call reported. The aide said the White House would need to see an actual proposal before weighing in.

“We can’t speculate on what may or may not be in the proposal. There is no proposal,” the official said. “So there’s nothing that we can be trying to torpedo.”

Senate Democrats are making plans to force a floor vote on legislation that would invalidate Arizona’s controversial immigration statute if the Supreme Court upholds the law this summer.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) will announce the fallback legislation at a hearing on the Arizona law Tuesday, a day before the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in a suit to determine whether Arizona had the authority to enact the 2010 state crackdown.

The legislation would have little chance of passing in a stalemated Senate or being approved by a GOP-held House, but it would allow Democrats to push their electoral advantage with Latino voters just as the presidential campaign heats up in July.

The plan is to allow Democrats a route to express displeasure with the Arizona law if the court allows it to stand, and it would force Republicans to take a clear position on the law during the height of the presidential campaign. The immigration law is deeply unpopular with Latino voters, who could be key to the outcome of the presidential and Senate races in several Western states.

In its second-biggest case this term, the court - fresh from hearing the Obama healthcare overhaul case - will consider on Wednesday whether a tough Arizona immigration crackdown strayed too far into the federal government’s powers.

A pro-Arizona decision would be a legal and political setback for Obama, who has criticized the state’s law and vowed to push for immigration legislation if re-elected on November 6.

A decision against Arizona would deal a blow to Romney, who has said the government should drop its challenge to the law.

It’s been widely assumed that Mitt Romney will moderate his positions on immigration to make inroads among Latinos in the general election, perhaps by supporting some sort of GOP version of the DREAM Act.

But what if Romney has no room to execute any such pivot?

I just got off the phone with Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, an adviser to Romney on immigration. He stated flatly that he didn’t think Republicans — or Romney — should, or would, support any version of the DREAM Act that provides undocumented immigrants with any kind of path to legal status.

If Romney sticks to this — and Kobach said he would — there’s very little room for him to moderate his approach to immigration. In addition to advising Romney on immigration, Kobach is a national GOP voice on the issue, suggesting the right would not permit any move of this kind.