"Comprehensive immigration reform" is a significant part of Obama's plan to divide the country into a majority of takers, versus a minority of taxpayers and producers. It attracts Democrat officeholders by offering a flood of new Democrat voters. It attracts the Chamber of Commerce and other crony capitalists by offering a flood of cheap laborers, enabling them to avoid paying free market wages to existing American workers. It attracts GOP leaders by the false promise of immediate endearment among supposedly conservative Hispanic voters.

However, this legislation is profoundly against the interests of existing American workers, both legal and illegal. It would depress American wage levels, increase unemployment, and accelerate both the immediate expansion of the American welfare state and its inevitable collapse. The result would be the end of America's experiment with self-government.

Historically, Democrat politicians were ardent supporters of trade unions. However, the Democrats have now become the party of the rich, with billionaires Buffet, Gates, Soros and Zuckerberg more than offsetting Adelson and the Koch brothers. They try to hide this fact, of course.

By now the Democrats only pretend to be the party of the working class, and union leaders play along with this deception. AFL-CIO and other union leaders conspire with Democrats to deceive their gullible members about the economic law of supply and demand; and specifically about the harmful effects of excessive immigration on American joblessness and wage levels.

The House GOP leadership intended to compromise with Democrats on this issue. They were insisting on reliably securing the border first, and then drastically increasing legal immigration rates (including the relatives of existing illegal immigrants) after this was done. This would have amounted to tens of millions of additional citizens (and mostly Democrat voters) over the next few years. This was both bad economic policy for the country and insane politics for the GOP.

What finally killed the deal was the leaders' realization that Obama's lawless administration cannot be trusted to enforce the security-first aspects of the law. (Or any law, for that matter.) The rule of law is necessary for civilization to endure, but by now it means nothing to Democrats, nor to the Department of Homeland Security.

-Already Obama has begun bypassing Congress, ruling by "pen and phone." 

-Already Obama's new head of Homeland Security brazenly says he will not wait for legislation to pass Congress, but will behave as if it already has. 

-A federal judge has found evidence that DHS cooperates with Mexican drug cartels in human trafficking, saying, "DHS should cease telling the citizens of the United States that it is enforcing our border security laws because it is clearly not. Even worse, it is helping those who violate these laws." 

At this point American workers, taxpayers and constitutionalists have all been sold out by Democrats, by DHS, by unions, and even by several GOP leaders. The remaining minority of political leaders who stand for the American people and the rule of law are populist conservative Tea Party Republicans and a few Libertarians.

As Ben Franklin said, we have a republic "if you can keep it."  At the moment the prospects are grim.