The Democratic Party has won twice as many seats as needed to take over the US House of Representatives and seem to be in a position to take over the US Senate as well in a stunning defeat for the Republican Party. In January, the 100th Congress will be sworn in and new leaders will be chosen to run committees which focus on immigration legislation.

Immigration was set to be the Republicans secret political weapon this year, but a funny thing happened on the way to the election. While most Republicans promoted tough immigration positions that emphasized strong enforcement and an opposition to any kind of relief for undocumented immigrants, voters generally rejected this hard-line approach and supported candidates more likely to support comprehensive immigration reform proposals.

The most telling evidence of this is the fact that Tom Tancredo's anti-immigrant Immigration Reform Caucus (comprised of 101 Republicans and 2 Democrats) had a horrible evening yesterday. As many as 20 of its members will be gone in the next Congress. (See further details below)

The rejection of the anti-immigrant message was seen in the overwhelming defeat of John Hostettler (R-IN), the chairman of the House Immigration Subcommittee. Hostettler lost 61% to 39%, a landslide by any definition. He made immigration his major issue and touted his record as rejecting any form of relief for the undocumented immigrant.

Another high profile anti-immigrant Congressman to go down in defeat was J.D. Hayworth, the Arizona Republican who frequently is seen on national television discussing immigration. In another Arizona race, Randy Graf lost by a large margin to Gabrielle Giffords to take over the seat of Jim Kolbe. Graf, a Minuteman, not surprisingly took a number of extremely tough immigration positions including opposing US citizenship for children born in the US to non-citizens, opposition to earned legalization for undocumented immigrants, and supporting of the CLEAR Act, a bill with numerous provisions removing due process rights for immigrants.

Kolbe noted that the anti-immigration strategy of Republicans like Graf was actually hurting the GOP. Kolbe told the Tucson Citizen newspaper "The focus on immigration hurt Republicans. They need to focus on key issues such as terrorism and economic growth."