Senator Graham Tells Obama to Write Immigration Bill

The March for America seems to have had little impact on Congressional politics. After revealing their recycled bipartisan framework for immigration reform a couple weeks ago, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press yesterday, still uncertain about the prospect of immigration reform. And this time, both Senators revealed that they were no champions of an immigration reform bill, raising a lot of eyebrows.

As one immigrant youth noted, it took Senator Schumer less than 12 seconds to start bashing undocumented immigrants — falling back on the harsh rhetoric of calling people illegal, implying that undocumented workers are the “wrong kind” of people to get into the country, and topping it off with a myth that undocumented immigrants are taking jobs away from hard-working Americans. Is NumbersUSA missing a spokesperson? Chuck Schumer would fit right in and feel at home. After all, Schumer seemed very pleased to declare that Lou Dobbs and Bill O’Reilly had positive things to say about their framework. Yikes!

Senator Graham once again called out the President for breaking his promise by not passing immigration reform in his first year in office, and reiterated that the White House had done almost nothing to advance the matter legislatively. At one point, when Senator Schumer urged Senator Graham to work with him on finding another Republican co-sponsor because having a more bipartisan bill is somehow more important than having a bill at all, Graham hit back on President Obama, challenging him to write the “reform” legislation and try to get cosponsors, including Democrats, to support it.

While the senator from South Carolina has a valid point, he is no hero on this issue either, telling La Opinion earlier that immigration reform would entail undocumented immigrants pleading guilty to a lesser charge. His incremental way of approaching the issue might make a little more sense save for the part about increasing enforcement without fixing the system.

Senator Schumer remained a trooper and refused to admit that the prospect of immigration reform in this legislative session was dead, saying that America did need doctors, engineers, and farm workers. That sounds suspiciously like the DREAM Act and Agjobs. It’s also funny considering that in conversations with the DREAM Act contingent this past week, Schumer has been quite adamant about standalone bills having no chance of passage this year. How exactly does he expect to push a far more controversial proposal through the legislature?

Lets take bets: Schumer and Graham plan to do nothing and all this is political posturing on their part to later say that they made a sincere attempt to tackle a volatile issue like immigration reform during election year.

Video Credit: immreport