John McCain on Immigration Reform

June 28th, 2008 at 07:28pm Mark Noonan

One thing we can be sure of, President McCain will be unafraid to touch the live wires in defense of what he believes:

QUESTIONER: Senator, you have been a leader on immigration reform in the Senate but unfortunately Congress has failed to make progress on this very critical issue. As the next President of the Unites States of America will comprehensive immigration reform, and not just enforcement, be one of your top policy priorities in you’re first 100 days in office?
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: It will be my top priority yesterday, today, and tomorrow. And my friends, thank you for the question, and let me just review for you again, we tried. I reached across the aisle to Senator Ted Kennedy, and by the way I know that he’s in your prayers, and we worked in bipartisan fashion. And we were defeated. And by the way, it wasn’t very popular, let’s have some straight talk, with some in my party, and so I did that and worked together so we could carry out a federal responsibility. We have to secure our borders, that’s the message. But we also must proceed with a temporary worker program that is verifiable and truly temporary, we must also understand that there are 12 million people who are here and they are here illegally and they are God’s children, they are God’s children and they will be treated in a humane fashion based on the principle obviously that someone who comes here {illegally} cannot have priority over someone who comes here {legally}. Could I mention to you, last Fourth of July I was in Baghdad, I was invited by General Petraeus to attend a ceremony where 688 brave young Americans decide to reenlist and stay and fight for America. There was also a group of people, 166 of them, that decided that they wanted to accelerate their path to citizenship. They were not citizens of this country but they chose to serve in harm’s way in defense of freedom in the military of the Unites States, I was deeply moves by this, that’s what America is all about.

QUESTIONER: Thank you Senator

SEN. MCCAIN: Immigration reform will be my top priority because we have the obligation to address a federal issue from a federal stand point. I will reach across the aisle once again and work in a bipartisan fashion. We will resolve the immigration issue in American and we will secure our borders.

I do believe that McCain learned his lesson and that any immigration reform will have as its knife edge secure borders - fortunately for McCain, a lot of the heavy lifting on border security is already being done, so by the time he is up there making his immigration reform proposals he should be able to point to a very large improvement in border security as the predicate for guest worker programs, etc.

Additionally, as long time readers know, I was one of the three or four people who actually backed the McCain immigraiton reform but McCain is right - these are God’s children and we must treat them well, even though they have broken our laws in coming across the border. In my view, at any rate, its not like we’re the innocent victims here - all sorts of Americans gave positive encouragement to illegal immigration by not inquiring too deeply into those who were doing the gardening, the maid work, the sheet rock installation, etc, etc, etc. I will never, ever advocate a program which rounds these people up as if they were common criminals - strengthened border security and greater enforcement of employment laws against hiring illegals will greatly attrit the number of illegals in country. For those which remain, we’ll have a pool of mostly long-term residents who have integrated into the society of the United States, and I want them to have the opportunity to become legal residents. I believe that I’m 100% with McCain on this, and I’ll defend it against all comers.

Tags: border security, guest worker program

Entry Filed under: Campaign 2008, Immigration, Republicans