For years, the Democrats have been pushing a ???legalization-first??? policy???to legalize illegal immigrants (putting them on the path to the voting booth) immediately, promising to start enforcing our immigration laws at some point down the road. What???s news is that now some Republicans are on board with the idea.
The reasoning behind this embrace of rampant illegality is that illegal immigration is unstoppable; so, the GOP is demographically doomed unless it can win more of the Latino vote. That???s what this de facto amnesty is supposed to accomplish.
BUNK
As we have pointed out before, this approach backfired the last time it was tried, in 1986. It???s Democrats who face demographic extinction, due to the ???fertility gap.???
In terms of fertility, ???the GOP has a lead over the Democrats among white women and among younger women at all levels of income and education,??? according to political scientist Eric Kaufman. And this ???Republican fertility advantage,??? he says, is growing.
Behind the Democrats??? ???baby bust??? is liberalism. As RedState.com reported, Arthur C. Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, observed, ???according to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147 children.
???If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That???s a ???fertility gap??? of 41 percent.???
???The growing Republican fertility advantage largely derives from religion,??? according to Kaufman. In his 2010 book, ???Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century,??? Kaufman argues, ???across denominations, the fertility advantage of religious fundamentalists of all colours is significant and growing. After 2020, their demographic weight will begin to tip the balance in the culture wars toward the conservative side, ramping up pressure on hot-button issues such as abortion. By the end of the century, three quarters of America may be anti-abortion.???
A 2008 study published by the National Institutes of Health found that ???women who report that religion is ???very important??? in their everyday life have both higher fertility and higher intended fertility than those saying religion is ???somewhat important??? or ???not important.?????? The study found that a ???substantial portion of the difference is associated with differences in family ideology,??? and found a strong link between ???religion, fertility intentions and family values.???
Census data show that from 1990 to 2008, more liberal religious identities, such as Episcopalian/Anglican, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Quaker and Unitarian/Universalist, and Jewish, dwindled, while more conservative churches, including Pentacostal/Charismatic, Evangelical/Born Again, Mormons and Nondenominational ???megachurches,??? surged.
In 2012, 71 percent of Latinos voted for Barack Obama, but they represented just 10 percent of the electorate. In contrast, Evangelicals alone represented 26 percent of all voters, and 78 percent of them voted for Mitt Romney.
Gambling that they might win what amounts to just 7.1 percent of the electorate, Republicans who favor immediate legalization are betraying their principles, undermining the rule of law, and encouraging further lawbreaking. In so doing, they risk alienating evangelicals???the 20 percent of the electorate that represents the most reliable segment of GOP???s base. That???s just poor math.
