Just thinking out loud here about possible legitimate avenues moving away from rather than further into the current mess.

Key elements of today's GOP and GOP constituencies act like an increasingly cornered endangered species.  They are reacting in desperation, now while they may believe they still have a chance to do something about it.  This seems to be a major reason why the immigration issue is such a flashpoint now.  Demographic, along with what they believe or assume to be inevitable cultural, dread.

The offended or angry response to concerns about too much immigration, along lines of "well, f*** them [partly because, well, they are one of those thems], let's support more immigration, legal and illegal, can also be a kind of knee-jerk or temper tantrum reaction.  

Some changes can be deeply destabilizing to a society.  Rapid demographic change can be, and often is.  The Europeans are certainly struggling with how to deal with it.  But really this seems to be a major challenge in a great many contexts around the world, and historically.

One response to the part of the more longstanding current native population that is concerned or upset about the extent of immigration is: "Tough.  Deal with it." 

Another is "Well, maybe you have a point.  What levels of immigration do you believe we should we be aiming for, based on multiple considerations including labor market dynamics, foreign policy implications, pace of demographic change and consequences it is having, etc.?" 

The US at present does not seem to have any ability to ratchet back the mutual hostility and mistrust and consider the latter sort of response,  Partly that is because the immigration issue and discussions surrounding it are so polarized that having reasonable, substantive discussion about it is difficult.  But partly that may also be because we don't have any strategy or policy approach for more effectively regulating who comes into the country that even potentially appears able to reduce the rate of illegal immigration below what it is now and has been for a while now, and beyond that exert greater influence ("control" is probably too strong a word) more generally over who enters the country.    

Should consideration, in policymaking, of reasonable limits to the speed of demographic change, based on a concern that too much demographic change too quickly can lead to dangerous levels of political instability, be beyond the pale?  Or are any such notions too hot or toxic for us to be able to deal with? 

That such a consideration could have some legitimacy seems to be a minority view among Democrats these days.  I don't think it should be.  Democrats don't want to be called xenophobes or racists (it seems as though I am much more often sticking up for the left than criticizing it, but this is one thing I do blame some elements of the left for), so there is reluctance even to make this seemingly straightforward, not particularly controversial, point. 

We expect drivers to have, on their person, a driver's license, available to present if need be.  Why, again, should we consider a national ID card, which could be incorporated into a driver's license or could be a separate driver's license-type physical object for those who do not have driver's licenses, to be a non-discussable?

It would seem to make enforcement of the immigration laws far more practical and feasible, without any need to get into discussions of building walls and such.  

I completely get, I think, how, even though immigration now is an issue that, as it has in the past, cut across partisan lines.  There are a wide range of views and policy preferences on immigration within the two major parties, clearly.

Democrats have been reluctant to take public positions suggesting any discouragement of immigration because Latinas and Latinos, in particular, as by far the largest immigrant population, lean strongly Democratic and Democrats want to push things further in that direction.  There are other views on immigration with the party, and the dynamics vary by region among other factors.  But this is the predominant one now.

Insofar as the Republicans go, large elements of their base are extremely upset, and energized, by what they view as too much immigration.  Some of this ethnic/racial anxiety.  Some of this is cultural anxiety.  And what is ethnic/racial vs. what is cultural anxiety can be difficult to distinguish in practice, even for the person experiencing feelings of anxiety.  Some of it is competition for jobs in parts of the GOP South where the economy is in rough shape, jobs and hope are already scarce, and such jobs as there are are often not living wage, relatively stable jobs with decent benefits.  There is an expectation this creates that GOP candidates and elected officials take a hard line stance highly unsympathetic to immigration and immigrants.

A far smaller but highly influential part of the Republican constituency is CEOs, corporate managers, and many business owners.  Some of their companies are hurt by immigration.  But some are helped by it and indeed require it.  Where hiring illegal immigrants is an essential part of a particular organization's business strategy, since we don't really have a very effective way of enforcing laws barring hiring of illegal immigrants even where there is political will to attempt to enforce those laws, the status quo is a bit dicey.  But, notwithstanding some highly publicized raids in some parts of the country, the status quo, pre-Trump anyway, is usually not so problematic as to be a concern that keeps them from doing what they want or feel they need to do to run their business.

The national ID card idea might be something some might consider as, possibly, worth discussing as a policy matter, but not as a political matter.  It might be thought of as just another maybe interesting, to some, policy avenue with not enough of a potential political constituency to generate any sort of real discussion among media, concerned and active citizens, and people who have authority to make decisions on immigration policy. 

Here at dag we don't have to be constrained but notions of what is considered, or assumed to have a potential political constituency vs. what is considered or assumed not to have such potential.  Fortunately there are places like this around where currently undiscussed ideas can be floated for discussion, among any interested. 

Pete Wilson ran for governor of California as a Republican years back on a platform of cracking down on illegal, but no legal immigration.  He was thrashed at the polls.  I suspect part of this was because of the modern-day GOP's ugly history on race, making his claims of "I'm not against immigration; I'm against illegal immigration" not quite credible among many voters.  

I believe there are people who genuinely are not at all "against immigration", indeed believe it has many beneficial impacts (as well as some negative ones, on wages near the bottom of the wage scale) and support it, but believe we need to be able to regulate it far more effectively, including by greatly reducing illegal immigration.  In fact, I know there are such people, because I am one of them.  I don't believe I am alone by any means. 

I think that IF we are at a point in our country now where what passes for "debate" about immigration is dominated by people who are, alternatively, accusing one another of being either (because one must be one or the other, right? obviously so) a) xenophobes and/or racists because they believe more effective approaches to reducing illegal immigration, and regulating immigration generally to the point where legitimate public policy decisions have some chance of more or less sticking (so voters can vote out the people who made those decisions if they don't like them), are needed and are interested in exploring ways to do so so, even controversial ones, because which non-controversial ones are available to discuss? OR b) one of those elite cultural snobs/hypocrites/Democrats/libruls/(fill in the blank) who looks down their noses at those expressing concerns about immigration as, clearly and obviously, racists and/or xenophobes who could not possibly have any legitimate concerns, THEN this effort probably will go the way of attempts to discuss any number of other apparent non-discussable issues in our day. 

OTOH, once, many years ago (either here or at tpmcafe; arta probably remembers as she might have been reading me back then), I wrote something on I-P.  As we know, anything whatever that one writes on I-P is destined to be taken as inflammatory.  Yet...that was an entirely civil (I know; horrible thing to praise just now) and productive exchange, I thought. 

A reasonable immigration policy, it seems to me, would take into consideration not whether we should facilitate immigration.  Clearly we should.  We need to.  The issues are how much, under what circumstances, using what mix of prevailing guidelines (family unification?  qualified job applicants? accepting refugees in some circumstances? other considerations?), and....crucially, I believe, how will we go about attempting to make policy decisions, made by democratically accountable officials (still, largely), stick?

Right now, we have great difficulty, it seems, making immigration policy decisions stick because we do not have very good, quick, relatively non-intrusive ways of determining whether individuals are legally in the country or not.

I am led to wonder if a national ID card might be the least problematic way to try to deal with this matter, and permit some sort of sane approach to immigration (only possibly leading to some sort of saner public reaction to immigration policy decisions, but possibly so, some of us might dare to dream).  

I am not an expert on immigration, by any means.  I know some about the issue.  But mainly I am trying to better inform myself about it, by doing some further reading on it and now with this effort.  If you disagree with or want to argue with me about any of the above, please don't assume I am automatically hostile, by any means.  In fact, I would appreciate being educated by others here who know more on this issue.  Thank you for reading this.  And thank you in advance for your patience with my highly limited knowledge on this issue.  I am not deliberately aiming to be offensive or stupid on this stuff (such talent, rather, may come naturally.)

I thought I would start here at dag, to see if any here may care to comment, rather than look around for other fora where this issue probably has been discussed.  At least here I have some context for knowing a few things about where different fellow denizens are coming from, what they've written on various matters in the past, etc. 

Let the rock throwing commence...3...2...1...now.