https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/democrats-prepare-go-offensive-immigration-coming-weeks-rcna150781
Key administration officials and top Democratic lawmakers discussed a path forward that would include forcing votes that Republicans would most likely oppose, two sources said.
Oh, I don't think it's that. First, the immigration laws really do need overhaul. Second, Dems are taking away an argument that Repubs will certainly use. Dems are forcing Repubs to vote down every immigration measure if they want to keep it as an issue.
"Taking away the argument" by giving republicans what they want doesn't work. I've seen this argument made for decades now and it's as stupid today as it was the first time it was thought up. In fact it's even more stupid now because there are decades of instances of this never working. What ends up happening is republicans get what they want, they continue to complain anyway, and the country moves to the right even more.
Democrats are letting republicans dominate the conversation and set the parameters for what is considered worth caring about and what is considered an acceptable solution. Even if republicans vote down every one of these measures, they will still use it as a benchmark for future legislative battles, especially when they get in power again (a 100% inevitability thanks to our broken two-party system).
And when they're done, they will have adopted virtually all of Republicans' current immigration policies and will have cast those policies as reasonable.
Once more, and I'll probably be dogpiled this time as well, but democrats are neo-liberals and republicans are (traditionally) classical liberals. "Conservative" is short hand for "socially conservative liberal".
Liberalism is a right wing ideology, designed by political philosophers and gamed by yee olde barons and aristocrats of yesteryear to give us this soft-imperialistic oligarchy that has been built on the backs of labour in the west, as well as the wage slavery in the east.
Case in point, the Tories in the UK are also liberals, whose Brexit campaign solely wanted to prevent immigration - although getting rid of EU fiscal regulations was probably the real reason.