Excellent post, Doyle. Falling back on "history never repeats itself in quite the same way," I noticed that Oklahoma has just passed a sweeping state immigration bill.

Once again, I will post my belief that the triggering event with respect to immigration will turn out to be many small triggering events, at the state level - all of which are driven by Federal inaction.

If it happens that way, as I think it will, then it is quite similar to how secession took place in the early 1860s - one or two states at a time taking matters into their own hands, but without secession this time around.