There is no issue as representative of the moral and intellectual decline of the Republican Party as immigration. The GOP has gone from the party of economic growth and innovation (for which legal immigration is essential), optimism (not Malthusian economics, which posits every new American uses up scarce resources), inclusion and family values (e.g., keeping immigrant families intact) to the party of xenophobia, lies (terrorists! murderers!), cruelty (child separation, deportation of "dreamers") and economic illiteracy.
The traditional immigration approach that President Ronald Reagan advocated didn’t evaporate some time in the distant past. President George W. Bush was a fierce advocate of immigration reform, as he and his wife Laura Bush reminded us at a naturalization ceremony on Monday.