Audrey Singer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who specializes in immigration issues, said the exceptionally bitter political divide right now made Republican calls for comprehensive immigration reform ring hollow.

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"The narrative is not always straightforward, as places are different, " says Audrey Singer, an immigration expert at Brookings and co-editor of Twenty-First-Century Gateways, a book published earlier this year which identifies new trends in immigration.

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