If Democrats try to add LGBT protections for same-sex couples to the Senate’s immigration reform proposal, they can kiss comprehensive immigration reform goodbye, Sen. John McCain said Wednesday.
“I think it is a red herring,” he said. “I think that do we want then to guarantee a taxpayer free abortion?”
“I’m telling you now, that if you load this up with social issues and things that are controversial, that it will endanger the issue,” he McCain cautioned, noting that supporters of immigration reform need to focus on getting the four major reforms that the ‘group’ of eight Senators (as they would like to be called henceforth) have presented if they want to get anything passed.
The Senators’ proposal first calls for stricter border security that would truly close the nation’s borders. Then, illegal immigrants who want to become legal citizens would have to register with the government and undergo a background check to ensure they are not violent criminals. Finally, they would have to pay a fine and back taxes in order to temporarily become legal residents, putting them on a pathway to citizenship. As POLITICO reports, immigrants who has meet those requirements would not be eligible for welfare, a provision in the plan that was likely included to help quell conservative opposition to the reforms.
“Which is more important: LGBT or border security?” McCain asked Wednesday morning at POLITICO’s monthly Playbook breakfast at W Hotel in Washington, D.C. “I’ll tell you what my priorities are,” a visibly annoyed McCain said.
“So, again, if you’re gonna load it up with social issues, that is the best way to derail it, in my view,” he added.
Schumer said he is for LGBT protections, but agreed with McCain that they need to get a basic framework in place yet first, noting that they hadn’t discussed LGBT protections yet.
“Look I’ll be glad to talk about it, discuss it, what the ramifications are and all that, but if somebody views that as the most important aspect of comprehensive immigration reform, then we just have a fundamental disagreement,” McCain said.
McCain used the breakfast to try to drum up support among conservatives for the group’s controversial reforms, pointing out that states like his will go from red to blue if Republicans continue to oppose comprehensive immigration reforms and Republicans would be pitting themselves against public opinion.
The “dirty secret,” he said, is that 72 percent of Hispanic voters went for Obama in the last election and that is causing the GOP to think twice about immigration reform.
“Republicans are beginning to appreciate that if we’re going to have a meaningful dialogue with our Hispanic citizens, Latino voters, that we’re going to have to resolve this issue,” he said. “It’s just a fact.”
McCain refused to criticize 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney specifically for failing to communicate a more compassionate and realistic message to Hispanic voters in the last election. Instead, he blamed the entire Republican Party for alienating Hispanics.
“I think the Republican Party – not Mitt Romney, not anybody else – but the Republican Party has failed to understand, to a significant degree, the importance of this issue to our Hispanic voter,” he said, noting that from a purely politics standpoint, “If you have a large block of Americans who believe that you’re trying to keep their brethren and sisterhood down, their fellow Hispanics down, and deprive them of an opportunity, obviously that’s gonna have an effect on their voters.”
McCain said that he expected the President to work with the group of Senators leading this effort because President Obama is more concerned with his legacy than he is about “harming the Republican Party.” The Arizona Senator said he is “guardedly optimistic” that Congress will be able to pass reforms, however, he admitted that he has not discussed the issue with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).
Boehner has been vague about his caucus’ position on the issue.
“There are a lot of ideas about how best to fix our broken immigration system. Any solution should be a bipartisan one, and we hope the President is careful not to drag the debate to the left and ultimately disrupt the difficult work that is ahead in the House and Senate,” Boehner said Tuesday.
