Flake rejects comprehensive immigration fix

by Dan Nowicki - Mar. 23, 2011 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

For years, Rep. Jeff Flake was one of the most reliable Republican champions for comprehensive immigration reform.

Not anymore.

As his campaign for Arizona's 2012 GOP Senate nomination revs up, Flake is explicitly rejecting his past advocacy for far-reaching legislation that would secure the border, enact a temporary-worker program and give many undocumented immigrants a pathway to legal status.

"In the past I have supported a broad approach to immigration reform - increased border security coupled with a temporary worker program. I no longer do," Flake says in an immigration-policy statement that was expected to be posted on his campaign website as early as today.

"I've been down that road, and it is a dead end. The political realities in Washington are such that a comprehensive solution is not possible, or even desirable given the current leadership. Border security must be addressed before other reforms are tackled."

Flake's stark shift to a harder line is reminiscent of the right turn that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., another one-time champion of immigration reform, took while campaigning for president in 2008 and for re-election to the Senate in 2010. As with McCain, Flake's moderate record on immigration is widely seen as a political liability in an Arizona GOP primary. Many Republican voters and conservative "tea party" activists strongly oppose any proposals they suspect could lead to what they decry as "amnesty" for illegal immigrants. Flake is the only Republican to announce his Senate candidacy.

Flake's new position echoes that of retiring Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., who negotiated an unsuccessful bipartisan immigration bill in 2007. Kyl recently used strikingly similar language to describe his current position against comprehensive reform. "I went down that road once, and it was a dead end," Kyl told The Arizona Republic in February.

Flake attributed his change of heart to Mexico's bloody drug war and his observations of "troubling" conditions along the border, not to statewide Republican politics. He reiterated the view that broader immigration reform is "a dead end" while stressing that he has consistently backed tougher border-security measures.

"For those who say that this is a late conversion, I've been supporting these border-security things all along," Flake told The Republic.

One national proponent of comprehensive immigration reform called Flake's retreat "disappointing, but also sadly predictable" given Arizona's heated immigration climate.

"It's kind of hard for him to walk away from this when he has his fingerprints all over the issue," said Angela Maria Kelley, vice president for immigration policy and advocacy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C. "It's not like he just gently engaged it - he was a full-throttle supporter of comprehensive reform. So it's hard for him to erase what in fact has been written in Sharpie pen."

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