There’s an old cliché that applies to many situations: “Follow the money.” This means, of course, that many actions, statements and rationalizations are best understood when the observer realizes that the initiator has their own financial self-interests at heart as they undertake various acts and then attempt to explain them.

In the current political environment, there is a close corollary to Follow the Money: Follow the Votes. Many issues cause politicians and activists on both sides to engage in logic-defying, contradictory actions and statements in their transparent attempt to convince voters.

Global Warming is certainly a prime example of this. Whether it’s Barbara Streisand maintaining her famously lavish, energy-intensive homestead, or Leonardo DiCaprio flying in an “eyebrow artist” 7500 miles from Australia to make himself look pretty for his Oscars attendance or Global Warming Champions Al Gore and Robert Kennedy Jr. famously taking fuel-gulping/pollution-spewing private jets to various events, the degree of hypocritical actions and statements in support of pet political causes is nothing short of incredible.

The hilariously-but-tragically labeled subject of “choice” is another perfect case. The apparent utter disregard for human decency and compassion that leads supposedly “Catholic” Democratic politicians like John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi to support unrestricted late-term abortion -- essentially the birth of a full-term child who is then mercilessly killed upon delivery, just seconds before qualifying as a legal “life” -- is a horrifyingly excellent illustration of “Follow the Votes.” We must have choice, after all, and we must capture the voters who support that.

However, as spot-on as the above examples are, there is one subject that defines Follow the Votes better than any other. That issue is immigration. Specifically, it is the leniency towards illegal immigration espoused by Democrats.

By current estimates, there are somewhere around 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Most have come through our southern border from Mexico and other Latin countries. U.S. southern border security is less than Berlin Wall-esque tight, to put it mildly. Republicans and Democrats alike decry our immigration system as “broken” and constantly cite the need for some vague, sweeping “comprehensive immigration reform,” the details of which are frustratingly never delineated in an actual bill.

The crux of the illegal immigration issue is the fact that children born to illegal immigrants residing in the United States automatically become U.S. citizens, with all the rights and privileges that that status confers -- including the right to vote. Democrats’ vehement defense of sanctuary cities, their oh-so-concerned, outraged protests over Republicans’ supposed desire to wantonly deport illegals and cold-heartedly break up families, the Dems’ dramatic assertions that illegals “play an indispensible role in our economy, pay taxes and do jobs that Americans won’t do,” it all amounts to nothing more than a disingenuous smokescreen in an effort to obscure their actual intent: to grow the ranks of future Democratic voters.

Latinos are the fastest-growing American demographic group and the prediction that the United States will become a “majority minority” country within a generation is based in large part on the growth of the Latino segment. Democrats can read predictive demographic trends as well -- or better than -- Republicans and have therefore oriented their illegal immigration strategy accordingly, realizing full well that illegal immigrants are low-income people whose families will be in need of Democratic-sponsored entitlement programs. The citizen offspring of illegal immigrants will be guaranteed reliable Democratic voters.

This brings us to the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which is offered as the rationale for why children of illegals become U.S. citizens. When the 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868, its primary intent was to ensure that newly-freed slaves were accorded full citizenship and rights under the Constitution. It is the famous opening clause,

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

that is cited as the primary reason for the U.S.-born offspring of illegal immigrants being accorded full citizenship.

Some Constitutional scholars assert that illegal immigrants are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. Rather, they are subject to the jurisdiction of their native country, since they have entered the United States illegally without any formally-recognized renunciation of allegiance to their own country, and therefore the “jurisdiction” reasoning of the 14th Amendment does not apply to them.

Nonetheless, in 1982, Supreme Court Justice William Brennan Jr. -- a staunchly liberal justice who supported abortion rights and opposed the death penalty -- made a ruling that read, “...no plausible distinction with respect to the 14th Amendment ‘jurisdiction’ can be drawn between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful.”

This addendum by Brennan is widely regarded as the modern-day legal justification for the citizenship of children born to illegal immigrants. No argument is being made here as to the logic or defensibility of Brennan’s 1982 ruling. But that ruling has given rise to a concerted Democratic political strategy spanning the last 35 years: maximize -- by any means needed, by any remotely-plausible argument, by demonization as inhumane anyone who opposes it -- the presence of illegal immigrants in the U.S. so that they have as many citizen children as possible to swing the future voting pendulum permanently in favor of the Democrats.

Follow the votes. Every Democratic position, utterance and policy proposal regarding illegal immigration is geared towards that goal.