Report: amnesty could create up to 17 million new voters

Considering the source, one may think the Center for Immigration Studies is worried about the electoral impact the Gang of Eight amnesty bill could provide, and you would be right. In their report author Steven A. Camarota writes:

There is no question that the effect of future immigration on the number of potential citizens will be very large if current policies remain unchanged. We cannot say what share of future arrivals will become citizens and vote. Even if only half do so, the impact could be significant and not just at the national level.

Obviously the thought process is that most of these immigrants will vote in such a manner to both loosen the restrictions on further immigration and open the spigots of the welfare state for new, poor immigrants. (In other words, for Democrats.) Moreover, since the bulk of recent population growth in the country comes from immigration this will also contribute to the traditional Caucasian majority becoming the minority as it has become in California.

Of course, there’s no guarantee any of these people will even become registered or bother to show up to vote, but this report points out the possibility is there. Yet there will still be a great deal of impact on our elections even if the immigration bill doesn’t pass based on the number of green cards we already give out.

Naturally this brings out the whole topic of immigration and border security, and right now we don’t have enough of either, at least in the legal sense. Obviously something needs to be done about the 11 to 12 million who are here sans documentation, but in fact the federal government has allocated and then pulled the money for building a secure fence on the Mexican border. It’s the least we could do, along with better tracking of those who overstay visas – another chief culprit of the illegal alien problem. This contributes in no small part to our crime problem as well.

Rumor has it that Barack Obama will pivot back to immigration once his government shutdown and debt ceiling imbroglios are resolved one way or the other, so the CIS report (one of a series put out this month) comes out at an opportune time.