Live Coverage Of The First Republican Debate

Earlier I noted that the immigration debate often seems stuck in the 1990s. Donald Trump’s comments are a perfect example: He’s talking about building a wall to keep out undocumented immigrants from Mexico, at a time when illegal immigration has slowed and the U.S. is now getting more new immigrants from Asia than from Latin America. Jeb Bush, meanwhile, makes a point that’s often lost: Many undocumented immigrants are visa-overstayers, meaning they entered the country legally but didn’t leave when they were meant to. A 2006 Pew report estimated that 40 percent of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. initially came here legally.