Immigrants flocking to GOP districts

Republican congressional districts are becoming magnets for immigrants — legal and illegal — but GOP lawmakers are not exactly embracing their new constituents.

Of the 50 House districts nationwide with the fastest-growing immigrant communities, 45 are represented by Republicans. All but three of those lawmakers voted for a bill that would make illegal immigrants felons.

Overall, GOP districts added about 3 million immigrants from 2000 to 2005, nearly twice the number that settled in districts represented by Democrats, according to an Associated Press analysis of census data.

The numbers help explain why illegal immigration is such a big issue in rural Georgia, eastern Pennsylvania and in suburbs throughout the United States...

For generations, most immigrants settled in big cities, attracted by fellow countrymen and by social service networks that catered to them. But immigrants increasingly are chasing jobs to fast-growing suburban and rural communities in Middle America — areas that have elected a lot of Republicans to Congress.

It's one of those natural processes, like the locust. Illegal immigrants go to prosperous places, raise the cost of living, lower wages, drive out the Republicans, increase the number of government jobs needed to take care of their social traumas, and then, when the place is Democratic voting, crowded, unattractive, and electing lots of corrupt anti-business Democrats so jobs are scarce, they move on to new Republican districts. Rinse and repeat.[Cross-posted at Isteve.com]