4 May 2010: "Republican Quits Immigration Reform"--WA Times

Here is a summary of an article which did a moderately in-depth look at Senator Graham's announcement that he was dropping out of working on a bipartisan immigration reform bill in the US Senate!

URL: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/apr/28/republican-quits-immigration-reform/

Last Tuesday Lindsey Graham, the only Senate Republican working with Democrats on a bipartisan immigration announced he was dropping it and said the issue must be pushed until 2012. He stated that the public would not support a bill until they believed that our borders were secure, a feat that he believes will come to pass over the next two years. "I believe we can do it by 2012, if we're smart and we address the big elephant in the room, and that is that our borders are broken," Senator Graham stated.

The bill has split both parties along different lines, and members of the same party appear to believe different narratives about the security of the border and the urgency for reform.

The Democratic Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, states that while the drug-cartel violence at the border is alarming, "numbers at the border have never been better." She feels that the US government should continue current border security practices, while keeping immigration reform on the long-term radar. On the other hand, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid is still pushing the immigration bill hard, in spite of his knowledge that with only 59 Democrats in Senate, he cannot pass it single-handedly.

Republicans are similarly split. As stated in the beginning of the article, Senator Graham pulled his support from the budding Senate bill because of a perceived lack of border security by the public. Republican Senators John McCain and Jon Kyl are calling on President Obama to deploy the National Guard to the border to enhance security, and at least one gubernatorial candidate (Georgia) has promised to enact similar reform legislation in his state if elected.

However, the 5 Senate Republicans President Obama called to gauge interest in a federal bill stated that they had other priorities. Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown stated, "We really should be focusing on jobs right now. We've been doing everything but."

Latino groups are boycotting Arizona businesses until the Arizona bill is repealed. Whether this will have any effect on legislators remains to be seen.