Another thing about the Republican platform: It calls for changing the 2010 Census so that only legal residents of the United States would be counted.

Michigan Republican Candice Miller has proposed a constitutional amendment to that effect, AP reports. The Census Bureau counts everyone regardless of immigration status.

In the GOP’s discussion of immigration, the platform also states that “allowing millions of unidentified persons to enter and remain in this country poses grave risks to the sovereignty of the United States and the security of its people.”

As for the question of legalizing the undocumented:

We oppose amnesty. The rule of law suffers if government policies encourage or reward illegal activity. The American people’s rejection of en masse legalizations is especially appropriate given the federal government’s past failures to enforce the law.

The 2008 Democratic platform discusses immigration not as part of a national security discussion but under the heading, “Renewing the American Community.” In favoring a legalization program, it uses a term that seems designed to reject the amnesty label. Instead of “allowing” immigrants to legalize, the Democrats would “require” them to do so:

For the millions living here illegally but otherwise playing by the rules, we must require them to come out of the shadows and get right with the law. We support a system that requires undocumented immigrants who are in good standing to pay a fine, pay taxes, learn English, and go to the back of the line for the opportunity to become citizens. They are our neighbors, and we can help them become full tax-paying law-abiding, productive members of society.

It’s a problem when we only enforce our laws against the immigrants themselves, with raids that are ineffective, tear apart families, and leave people detained without adequate access to counsel.