I consider my self a Democrat, but I am probably closer to Libertarian.
There is a problem with people living in the USA that are not here legally.
Democrats apparently could care less. * **
**Why? **
** This is the heart of my question. I don’t understand why the immigration issue gets drawn on party lines. I don’t get why nothing is getting done.
The Democrats have positions on immigration.
Nothing is getting done because corporations benefit the most from the slave labor, Republicans benefit the most from having the issue alive as part of their “brown people are scary” platform, and Democrats benefit the most out of having a solid voting block that is scared shitless of the other guys. Nobody wants to get rid of illegal immigrants. Edit: Also because the only losers in the illegal immigrant situation are the illegal immigrants.
Show me any evidence that illegal immigrants are voting for Democrats or anybody else.
Show me any evidence that he said that.
I read this post to say that Republicans want illegal immigrants as slaves, and Democrats want them as anti-Republican voters.
Exactly right. To paraphrase Edward Abbey…“The conservatives get their cheap labor source, the liberals get their cheap cause”.
Everybody (except perhaps the immigrants themselves) benefits. Everybody pays lip service to the evils of illegal immigration but nobody wants to do anything serious to end it.
SS
Democrats care, just not enough to support attempts to demonize people, who are a demonstrable net asset to the country by the way, and chuck them across the border en masse.
Please define, with specifics, what the problem is with people living in the US illegally that giving them a reasonable path to citizenship, which most would jump at by the way, wouldn’t solve.
What’s the downside of the Dream Act, for example?
The problem, I contend, is not the immigrants. The problem is the xenophobes and racists, who skew predominantly Republican, who get twisted into Escher-like pretzels whenever a brown person benefits from anything, even if they work twice as hard for it.
By the way, ‘could care less’ and ‘couldn’t care less’ are in no way equivalent. Couldn’t care less means one is unable to care less, that is one does not care. Could care less means one has the capacity to care less, that is one, to an extent, cares.
Hm. I see I went a little ‘by the way’ happy in my post above, by the way. 
I would have thought migration controls would be anathema to a libertarian.
Republicans want illegal immigrants as cheap labor; Democrats want Hispanic voters, who are sympathetic to immigration generally. It’s not that they want to win over the illegal immigrants themselves.
I think the Democrats should use a plank to serve as the spine they seem to lack to tell the Republicans to get stuffed. They have they numbers and should be using them instead of losing them.
Oh, to dream.
Yeah; I don’t know what came over me. 
I agree that is one reasonable interpretation of the situation, though I don’t see exactly how I am supposed to surmise that particular viewpoint from DigitC’s words. There are lots of people outside of Hispanics who don’t appreciate the standard Republican positions on immigration – even George W. Bush. 
And there are a lot of reasons to be scared of Republicans besides their stance on immigration.
As a final point, I think most Democratic politicians tolerate illegal immigrants for the exact same reasons as Republicans – cheap unskilled labor. A political stalemate suits both parties. But it riles the Republican base, so their party has to do more trash talking about immigrants.
Because Democrats have painted themselves a corner on the issue and the best thing is to ignore it.
As for the plank in the website given by appleciders. Notice the lip-service the Dems pay to programs that have proven not to work.
More secure borders? Did the Dems under Obama put up barbed wire fencing? landmines? have the Army patrol the border complete with drones?
Holding employers accountable? Hell, Maricopa County under Joe Arpaio couldn’t enforce the law but the INS will?
And notice the third, a fancy way to say stay the course and you will have amnesty (and vote Democrat).
Corporations want them as slaves, Republican leaders want them as a scary boogie man, the republican base does want them all gone. The democrats want hispanics as a solid voting bloc behind them, not illegal immigrants per se. They’ve had since 06 to get something like the Dream Act passed (something i am fairly sure even Bush would have signed) and they did not act until right before the election when it was politically convenient and assured of defeat.
Doesn’t that just strengthen the argument? If you’ve got that many unemployed “real Americans”, and they still refuse to do the agricultural or landscaping or whatever work, then surely, there’s no chance “real Americans” would ever do that kind of work.
It was filibustered (by two votes) in October of 2007. I don’t really see how that’s “right before the election”. Its been reintroduced multiple times, and has passed the House at least once, but it never has the votes to beat the GOP filibuster, despite the support of a couple member of the GOP on several occasions.
FWIW, its been reintroduced once again, so here’s hoping. It seems a no brainer to pass it, but its pretty hard to see how it will beat a filibuster now that the GOP has increased their minority in the Senate.
You may have just answered one of the questions upthread about how it gets used as a political pinball.