Immigration Reform: Lindsey Graham takes ball, goes home


"I'VE got some political courage, but I'm not stupid," Lindsey Graham said in an interview Saturday with the Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin. He was explaining his decision to pull his support from the climate-change bill he had helped author with John Kerry and Joe Lieberman, in protest over the Democrats' decision to move immigration reform first. Mr Graham was willing to put himself on the line in supporting a climate-change bill, he said, but not if Democrats were unwilling to prioritise the bill and make it worth his while. Mr Graham called the Democratic shift to immigration reform a "cynical political ploy".Question: How do you distinguish between a "political ploy" and "responding to constituents' demands"?

Hispanic leaders and voters have been demanding immigration reform with increasing urgency for years. Hispanics are a massive Democratic constituency. From their perspective, they're the ones who have been constantly disappointed by the party's failure to prioritise their issues, and who have been repeatedly taken for granted. "Our community and its leaders have now spent years waiting patiently at the back of the line of national priorities," wrote
congressman Luis Gutierrez on March 17th. "We've asked nicely, we've advocated politely. We've turned the other cheek so many times that our heads are spinning." The passage of Arizona's strict new anti-illegal-immigration law has infuriated Hispanics across the country. Arizona's biggest Spanish-language newspaper is calling for a tourism boycott of the state. Hispanics plan a "mega-march" in Dallas on May 1st to protest the law; the last such march, in 2006, drew up to 500,000 people. READ FULL STORY
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