McCain’s Immigration Waffle

Talk about pandering to your wanna-be, gotta-have conservative base. Senator John McCain, the maverick, who just last year led a major bipartisan campaign with liberal icon Ted Kennedy to pass sweeping immigration reform, is humming a different tune these days.

Wooing skeptical conservatives by abandoning his calls for immigration reform and banging the drums on border security are the beat of the presumptive Republican nominee's new song and dance.

At the National Council of La Raza Convention two weeks ago, he sounded practically apologetic concerning his “about-face” asking “for your trust that when I say I remain committed to fair, practical, and comprehensive immigration reform.” If campaign websites are any measure of a candidates' commitment, it’s worth noting that nowhere on McCain’s homepage does the word immigration appear.

McCain stresses that securing borders is important, but his plant wouldn’t solve the bigger problem of what to do with the 12 million undocumented workers already living and working here. Senator Barack Obama’s proposals confront this issue more responsibly. They recognize that both things need to be addressed: beef up border security and legalize undocumented workers—an integral and indispensable part of our economy—need to be addressed.

Immigrants account for 5.4 percent of the country’s GDP and generate $700 billion in economic activity a year. Further, they fill a growing gap in our aging workforce and contribute about $6-7 billion in Social Security per year, which helps our elderly retire with dignity. Our immigration system needs to be brought into sync with today’s economic reality by integrating new immigrants into our cities and communities, not evicting them.

But McCain knows all this. For years, he was a forceful and practical voice on the issue of immigration reform. And he put his words into action by taking the lead on a bill that would have been a major step toward fixing our broken system.

But that was then. And now that he is running for the highest office in the land, he is running from his record on immigration reform. It’s a sad commentary on politics, and a telling statement about McCain’s commitment on this and who knows what other issues.