The thing with this clip isn’t just that Democrats changed how they talk, it’s that the immigration policy issues changed. When Obama took over, illegal immigration had peaked and the discussion was largely what to do with people who came from Mexico to work years earlier. The longtime bipartisan idea was more border security plus an earned path to citizenship. By the end of his presidency, though, the challenge was a new wave of asylum seekers from outside Mexico — a totally different issue that existing immigration reform ideas did not really address. Democrats never figured out what a similar framework should be for that issue and they still haven’t. Saying you want people to come legally or you want more border security does not address what you do about them.
See Tweet