Thread: Graham: I care equally about immig and CC (amnesty politics)

Ezra Klein
Washngton Post
Sen. Lindsey Graham: 'I care equally about immigration and climate change'

Sen. Lindsey Graham has been in the news this week for threatening to vote against the climate bill he's crafted if the Democrats move on immigration reform this year. Given that Graham is the only Republican on either bill, it's a very credible threat. We spoke about both issues, and how to move forward on them, this morning. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

EK: You told Talking Points Memo that you would filibuster your own climate change bill if immigration moves this year.

LG: Yeah, I was asked a question. They said, "You would vote against your own bill?" And I said yes. I care equally about immigration and climate change. But if you stack them together this year you'll compromise climate and energy. You'll compromise my ability to get votes on climate change. When I told everyone I would do climate, in fact, I was assured we also wouldn't be doing immigration.

And on immigration, Arizona has made comprehensive reform very difficult this year. And the manner in which it's coming up, where Sen. Reid brings it up at a rally because he's down 15 points in Nevada, is bad for immigration reform. In this environment, what you'd have is bipartisan rejection of immigration. You'd get 75 or 80 votes for the McCain-Kyl [border security] amendment. Then, when you tried to put the pathway to citizenship on the table without a long process of planning and thinking and building support, you'd probably get 60 people voting against it. So you would have lost on immigration again.

EK: But doesn't Arizona add urgency to immigration reform? Isn't it clear we can't just wait for things to get worse, and doesn't that mean the Senate has to begin work on this priority?

LG: It shows two things. First, it shows the urgency of comprehensive reform, but it also shows that the country is moving away from comprehensive and towards border security. If you polled Americans and asked whether we should do comprehensive reform or focus on the border first, you'd probably get 75 percent for focus on the border. What's happened from 2007 to now has made comprehensive reform harder, not easier. In 2007, we had an illegal immigration problem. We didn't have a raging war in Mexico problem. You got the rancher killed, which put everyone on steroids. Then you got this law in Arizona, which is not the right answer but is understandable from people who feel like they're under siege.

So you start with where most of us are at. You say, let's do border security this year. The problem is the Hispanic community sees this as a slight. And I'm sympathetic to that thinking. Border security has been used in the past as an excuse for not doing comprehensive immigration reform. My advice is that securing the border now gives a guy like me who wants to get to comprehensive reform the credibility to get there. But if you bring up immigration in this climate, you'll divide the country further. You'll get a huge vote for border security and interior enforcement, but when it comes to pathway to citizenship, you'll break down big-time. That's where the politics get hard, when you realize we've got 12 million people who can't just be deported and we need to give them a reasonable way to stay here.

EK: But as you say, a lot of work needs to be done before a bill. Presumably there's some process you could support that may not mean a bill moves before the election, but sets the stage to handle the problem after the election.

LG: Me and Jeb Bush and people like that make a commitment to work on this issue [after our interview, Graham clarified that he would like to see, and serve on, a bipartisan commission that would report back with a comprehensive immigration reform proposal after the election]. I'll continue to work with Chuck Schumer. We put out an op-ed together on this. People say to me, “That's a contradiction.â€

It appears clear that Graham will support amnesty for the illegal aliens. He is holding American citizens hostage with his denial to move on the issue now. Every American citizen and every "legal immigrant" needs to push this issue now while the iron is hot. We need an updated immigration law with teeth for enforement AND NO AMNESTY for illegals now or in the future. This is not a game of "Hide and Seek" where the illegal is rewarded with amnesty for violating our laws.