New York Times
By Ashley Parker
February 20, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/21/us/politics/arizona-senators-return-to-immigration-overhaul.html
The political risks of supporting an immigration overhaul have long been apparent to Senator John McCain, as evidenced by his evolving position on the topic over the years. This week offered another sharp reminder of what getting out in front of the issue can mean when crowds at back-to-back town-hall-style meetings in Arizona turned hostile toward Mr. McCain’s plan to introduce legislation that could lead to legal residency for some who broke the law in entering the country.
“Everybody in this audience, you’re taking away from Social Security to give it to a dependent class of people,” shouted one man, who Mr. McCain eventually called “a jerk.”
The senator, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, said he was undergoing “an Orwellian experience” as his constituents shouted that he needed to build the “dang fence” that he had once promised in a notable campaign ad. Attendees also suggested that guns were the only way to stop the influx of immigrants from coming across the border.
Like it or not, Mr. McCain is now back at the center of the immigration debate, sharing the spotlight with Arizona’s other senator, Jeff Flake, also a Republican, as the two men help fight to overhaul the nation’s immigration system. Longtime followers of the immigration debate could be forgiven for having déjà vu.
After all, the sight of the two Arizonans taking the lead on the divisive issue feels a lot like 2007, when Mr. McCain and Mr. Flake, then a member of the House, were each co-sponsors of their own immigration proposal. Mr. McCain that year pressed his broad plan with Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Mr. Flake joined with Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, Democrat of Illinois, to introduce a plan to tighten border security while giving illegal immigrants a chance for legal residency.
Then Mr. Flake and Mr. McCain did something of an Arizona shuffle, trading in their calls for a broad overhaul that could lead to legal residency to focus more on border security. During a 2008 Republican presidential primary debate, Mr. McCain disavowed his own 2006 immigration proposal, and Mr. Flake, facing a challenge from the right during his Senate bid last year, called his previous broad approach to immigration reform “a dead end” until the border was secure.
Now the two senators are back as Republican point men on the issue. Though their hope of overhauling the nation’s immigration system in 2007 died on the Senate floor, the two have returned to the negotiating table, with the goal of finishing what they started.
“If you’re from Arizona and you’re not involved in trying to fix the immigration problem, then it’s tough to say you’re representing your state,” said Mr. Flake in an interview. “You ought to be involved. I understand that some people don’t agree with the direction I want to go, but you’ve got to be involved.”
Mr. Flake and Mr. McCain are part of a bipartisan group of eight senators working to produce legislation by the end of March. The two other senators making up the group’s Republican half are Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Marco Rubio of Florida.
But the Arizona senators’ journey has involved fits and starts. Facing a primary challenge in 2010 from J. D. Hayworth, a conservative and former talk-radio host, Mr. McCain switched his focus from a comprehensive approach to border security, running an ad that ended with him walking along the state’s border and declaring, “Complete the dang fence.”
During Mr. Flake’s Senate race two years later, he similarly doubled down on border security.
“Those of us who have been pushing this for a decade, we ran into a brick wall, again and again,” Mr. Flake said, explaining his 2012 stance. “And I think all of us recognized the political reality, that unless we addressed the border situation, then we don’t have the political oomph to get it across the line.”
Critics say the men acted out of political expediency and gave in to pressure from the right, reneging on calls for an immigration overhaul in favor of the more politically safe option of simply securing the border.
“Until this year, you simply could not run for office here without taking a hard right stand on immigration and have any hope of winning a primary,” said Clint Bolick, who has written a book on immigration with former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida that is being published next month. “The instinct is not to leave any room on your right on immigration, and certainly McCain and Flake did that, notwithstanding their previous positions.”
Mr. Flake and Mr. McCain, however, said their constituents would never have accepted a full-scale immigration bill until they first believed the border was secure. Now, they explain, not only is the border safer, but any plan they endorse will have border security “triggers” that must be met before any pathway to citizenship — a key component for most Democrats — can begin.
“I said we’ve got to secure the border, and I’m saying that now,” Mr. McCain said. “I think border security has improved considerably, and I think that’s caused a change in attitude.”
Immigration advocates are eager to welcome Mr. McCain and Mr. Flake back to the fold.
“McCain and Flake have not only an enlightened view of how to solve this problem, but they also have the most practical view of how to solve this problem,” said Frank Sharry, president of America’s Voice, which supports giving legal status to illegal immigrants. “So I think they decided, ‘Yes, we tacked to the right when the G.O.P. in Arizona went a little crazy, but now is the time to craft a solution that voters will understand once they see that it works.’ ”
Mr. Sharry, who remembers the two senators’ past immigration efforts as “what you imagined in high school civics class,” said that Mr. Flake and Mr. McCain seemed to have come full circle on their promise of an immigration overhaul.
“If these guys hadn’t come back, I don’t think we’d been having this conversation today,” Mr. Sharry said.
Mr. Flake said for him, the issue was personal. “I grew up on a ranch, on a farm, in Northern Arizona, and I worked alongside mostly Mexican labor,” he said. “And since that time, since I was a kid, I’ve never been able to lump all those who come across the border in the same class, in the criminal class.”
Mr. Flake, who moved to the Senate last month, says he is still in touch with his former House colleagues and plans to be active in urging them to get behind broad immigration legislation.
Referring to Republican losses in November, Mr. Flake said: “There’s nothing like a bad election to focus the mind. We’ve been involved in this because we thought it was the best policy, but now if people aren’t willing to do it for the policy, they may be willing to do it for the politics.”
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