Key Senate Democrats have their own problems with yesterday’s immigration accord. This has been a major stumbling block in the effort to craft bipartisan immigration legislation. Republicans need certain enforcement guarantees while Democrats want lenience; Republicans see the immigration problem in terms of labor, Democrats in terms of new voters.
Concessions to one side almost without fail make any plan less appealing to the other. The internal contradictions of the resulting proposals make it very difficult to hold a coalition together and even harder to get a bill that makes practical sense.
