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Immigration & anti-immigration laws

It used to be Republicans that were pro immigration and democrats that were anti -immigration.  GOP donors were keen to keep wages low, while democrats were supporting their unionized workers supporters and making sure that immigration would be difficult.

Of course this a is gross exaggeration, but today the table has turned.  The most rabid anti-immigrationist are the GOP, and they do it because their base is anti-immigration.  It has little to do with wages, it has everything to do with identity politics that the GOP has been pushing since 1964.  Trump was the culmination -- the first President to say plainly that he doesn't like Mexicans who bring diseases and crime to the US (as if Americans could not do that themselves).

The principal feature of identity politics is that it's US against THEM.  In the past, the GOP had paid lip service to the christian right and to the anti-immigration firebrands (think the Bush family).  Today the christian right discusses, in conferences, their objective of making America into a theocracy (seriously there's video...)  and white suprematists in the GOP begin to give claws to the anti illegal immigrants laws that were put in the books years ago -- identity politics is about tribalism; nothing more. The business community is largely out of the political process, and has little input in the GOP conversation, they have been abandoned by the GOP which can now easily raise money through social medias, political funding is no longer driven by corporation, but by outraged individual's donations.  You just have to sound outraged and the cash flows in.  

DeSantis was brilliant to pass his anti-immigration laws, that are coming into force on July1.  The economic impact is irrelevant, a couple of farms will be inconvenienced maybe even go into bankruptcy, but then they were often the hypocrites that were GOP members and supported these policies...think about it the middle of the country is truly GOP dominated.  They like this identity politics shtick.  

I would argue that there are zero negative consequence to DeSantis' anti-immigration laws, GOP members are for this and the Democrats were never going to vote for him anyway.  If DeSantis had been a democrat the GOP would have forced him to resign as governor, but since the GOP in Florida does what it wants, the Governor can stay around and if his presidential bid falls apart, he still has a job...guaranteed.

For DeSantis the odds just improve a little bit overnight, 

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