Bill--

It really boils down to whether you think illegal immigrants should be offered a path to citizenship or not.   It's fairly obvious what Dobbs thinks--the site you linked to didn't mention a wall outright, as I recall--but it's evident what Dobbs means with his harping on "security"--as if a wall will provide that. And he won't even consider integration of illegal immigrants into US society until the nirvana of complete security has been reached. Of course he's also the one who came out against St. Patrick's Day--that's how much of a deep thinker he is.

If Democratic candidates don't offer a clear choice between them and Republicans on this issue, Hispanics will look to other issues. And a lot of them are pretty conservative on issues like homosexual marriage, abortion (obviously, the Catholic church influence), and susceptible to Bushite specious appeals to patriotism, as in the Pledge of Allegiance controversy, not to mention the Iraq war--in which a lot of Hispanics are fighting.   Some Democrats are already susceptible to attacks on the basis of opposition to organized religion--a la "Religion: A Form of Mental Illness".

So if Democrats don't offer this clear choice on the single biggest issue to Hispanics, they will deserve what they get.

At this point, anybody born in the US has automatic US citizenship. But the more we edge towards creating a large group of people living in the US but who are not on track to become citizens, the more likely we''ll wind up with problems like those of France. And mass deportation, I'm sure you'll agree, is not an option.