Republican, Illegal Immigration | featured news

California's elected Republicans have long had a simple approach to illegal immigration: Those who broke the law coming here should leave. But the confluence of politics and personal threat have now put many Republican legislators in Washington and Sacramento in a very different place: eager to embrace an overhaul of immigration laws and willing to consider legal status for some of the country's nearly 12 million illegal immigrants, 3 million of whom live in California.

Mitt Romney has had a lot to say about immigration over the past few days, but what he has said adds up to a giant question mark. Rarely has a presidential candidate had as many opportunities to clarify or recalibrate his position on a vital issue, and rarely has a candidate passed up those opportunities as consistently as the former governor.

In the past six days, President Obama has sent a very clear message to Republicans in Congress. And that message goes like this: Bring it on. His decision to stop actively deporting young illegal immigrants, which was announced last Friday, and his action Wednesday to invoke executive privilege over documents tied to the “Fast and Furious” program both amount to a finger in the eye of House GOPers.

Mitt Romney's campaign is reportedly paying for automated calls in Iowa that hit GOP presidential rival Rick Perry on illegal immigration.

Many Republican strategists see recent remarks having a potentially negative impact in swing states with many Hispanic voters.

Many illegal immigrants who were facing deportation despite having no criminal record will be allowed to stay in the country and apply for a work permit under new rules from the Homeland Security Department. Republicans are balking at the change....

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman says her husband might have seen a 2003 letter warning that their housekeeper's government records ...

Senior Republicans have escalated the increasingly bitter fight over immigration with proposals to rewrite the US constitution to block the children of illegal aliens from obtaining citizenship. In the latest move to inflame the racially tinged issue ...