Graham and McCain: Once Upon a Time…

America's Voice Blog

Posted 08/06/10 at 01:42pm

Translated from America's Voice en Español.

Once upon a time, it looked like two Republican senators had enough common sense to want to fix their party’s relationship with Latino voters and the Hispanic community. These senators frequently faced attacks from their Republican companions for standing up for their “principles” on such an explosive issue as immigration.

But now, it’s clear that Lindsey Graham and John McCain—Republican senators from South Carolina and Arizona, respectively—have stalled their support for a comprehensive immigration reform bill, refusing to budge despite repeated requests for support, and started parroting the Republican refrain “secure the border first.”

At least they’d steered clear of proposing that the Fourteenth Amendment be changed to deny birthright citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants. The section guaranteeing that anyone born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction is a citizen is part of the bedrock of the Constitution.

Until recently, when Graham said that the amendment might have to be brought up to date: “I’m looking at the laws that exist and see if it makes sense today.”

Of course, it seems that Graham had one message in English for Fox News, and another in Spanish for Univisión, where he said he would only consider the proposal once Congress has addressed what to do with the millions of undocumented immigrants already living among us.

McCain, for his part, supports “the idea” of holding hearings on the topic—an idea that has been proposed by a growing number of members of the Republican congressional leadership.

Politics are petty—and even more so in an election year.

Maybe McCain still hasn’t forgiven Latinos for not voting for him in 2008, when he faced Barack Obama for the presidency. Where his opponent offered only promises for the future, McCain could offer a history of action—he had worked with Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy on a bipartisan reform bill—but Hispanic voters chose the former.

His need to lock down the Republican primary for his Senate seat on August 24th has led him to pander to the extreme right wing, even though polls say he has a significant advantage over his challenger, anti-immigrant ex-Congressman J.D. Hayworth.

Graham is just trying to help out his friend McCain—and maybe, as he looks toward his next reelection in 2014, help himself out a bit as well.

At a point when 41% of Republicans believe that President Obama was “probably” or “definitely” born outside the U.S., according to a CNN/Opinion Research poll, it’s clear who these two senators are catering to. But the extremists don’t trust them anyway.

All they’re doing is continuing to dig their own graves with Latino voters. All they’re doing is giving ammunition to Democrats, who don’t have to do anything for Latinos in an election year when they can just accuse Republicans of being anti-immigrant.

Besides, these senators couldn’t get 60 votes in the Senate for comprehensive immigration reform. Do they really think they could get two thirds of each house of Congress to back a change to the Fourteenth Amendment? They couldn’t pass a bill, but they can amend the Constitution?

Three years ago, the National Council for La Raza (NCLR) recognized Graham at the Capital Awards Gala for his work on immigration reform. At the gala, Graham spoke about his first contact with the Hispanic community—guided by his friend Dan Garza, who had served with Graham in the Air Force.

“On behalf of the Dan Garzas of the world, we’re going to solve this (immigration) problema…We’re not going to run people down. We’re not going to scapegoat people. We’re going to tell the bigots to shut up, and we’re going to get this right.”

We’ll see if Graham follows his own guidance.