Charleston Daily Mail

AUSTIN, Texas -- The Lone Star State has long welcomed Hispanic immigrants, no matter how they got across the state's 1,200-mile border with Mexico.

Back when another border state, California, voted to cut public services to illegal immigrants, then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush was preaching that immigrants were equal players in the state's economy.

But the atmosphere has changed in Texas, home to roughly 10 percent of the United States' illegal immigrants. Now, a growing chorus of Republicans and some Democrats is pushing some of the harshest immigration-related measures in the United States -- laws that would not only deny public services to illegal immigrants, but strip their American-born children of benefits as well.

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