Senator Graham: No, Comprehensive Immigration Reform Is Not Amnesty

I pointed out recently that immigration reform need not put all its hope in the Democratic party -- while all donkeys might not support comprehensive immigration reform, all elephants definitely don't oppose it. And Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is one of the Republicans who proves that statement.

In an interview with the Atlantic last week, Graham went up against Republican cries of "amnesty" targeted toward derailing comprehensive immigration reform. He points out that, actually, the solution expected to be proposed in the Senate and the CIR ASAP bill in the House are not amnesty by any stretch of the word. Amnesty would just say hey, undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States, you can all just keep hanging out, no fines, no background checks, no six years of conditions to be met before you can even become a permanent resident. The current and expected proposals in Congress are far from offering that.

The amnesty monster (oh! the horror!) is a distraction tactic to divert attention from what is actually being proposed, and what we really need: a means for undocumented immigrants to "come out of the shadows," as Graham says, stop living in fear of deportation, and embark on a pathway to "get right with the law."

CIR ASAP would require undocumented immigrants that have contributed to the U.S. (through work, studying, and/or military or community service) to pay a fine and undergo a background check that shows up clean, with no serious convictions, in order to obtain a conditional legal residence. They would then have to wait a full six years before applying for a green card, during which time they need to demonstrate that they have continued to contribute to the U.S., chipped in with taxes, kept crime-free, learned English, and met certain civic requirements.

Graham says, yes, we need more border security. And he's concerned with making sure that by fixing our broken immigration system, we won't have large numbers of undocumented immigrants in the future. (After all, no immigrant really wants to be undocumented, to live in fear of deportation.) But he also makes it clear that if "amnesty" means any kind of pathway to legalization, then the alternative is deporting or imprisoning 12 million undocumented immigrants (many of them children), which is just "not practical."

It doesn't exactly seem like we have a spare $100 billion lying around -- the expected minimum amount it would cost, not including the harder to pin down expenses such as tracking down undocumented immigrants and court fees when unjust deportation is challenged, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement itself. This is more than double the total yearly budget for the entire Department of Homeland Security, which has bigger priorities like actually keeping America safe from terrorists.

I don't always agree with Senator Graham, but in this case, it's good to see somebody speaking truth to the Republican Party from within.

Photo credit: lgraham.senate.gov