Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach — perhaps the most ardent immigration hardliner among Republican officials — succeeded in convincing his party to get tougher on illegal immigration.

Already known as a refuge for people from other lands, New Haven is tightening its embrace of newcomers as its mayor seeks to extend voting rights to undocumented immigrants and other noncitizens.

Now that the GOP-led Texas Legislature has failed for the second time in two months to pass anti-Hispanic, anti-immigrant legislation, the leaders should ask themselves whether anything is ever accomplished by the politics of division.

It was earlier this month that anti-abortion activists decided to erect a series of billboards en Español meant to discourage Latinas from considering abortion in the event they became pregnant. Those billboards – sponsored by the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles group – didn’t even last a month.

The League of United Latin American Citizens is suing the state of Texas for the political boundaries their Legislature drew – saying those boundaries deliberately go out of their way to ignore the significant Latino population growth that state experienced in the past decade.