Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake spoke at a town hall meeting on immigration today in Mesa. One major takeaway: McCain made a forceful case for granting citizenship—albeit after a long, 13-year process that includes fines and fees—to the 11 million undocumented people now in the United States.
That puts him at odds with much of the GOP base, many members of the GOP caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the Republican National Committee, which voted earlier this month to oppose any path to citizenship for the undocumented, including the DREAM Act kids. (We’ll have more on the RNC vote in this week’s print edition.)
Watch McCain’s comments on why there should be a path to citizenship after the jump.
This article appears in Aug 22-28, 2013.
i don`t belive both of them for 1 minute , if there undocumented send them back and let them do the paper work from there ,not to live on our wellfare sys,
Do You really believe that the system We have now is working?
How do You propose to gather up 11,000,000 illegals and
send Them back? Rather than complaining and making
unrealistic proposals, come up with a better idea.
Flake you chose to go the McCain RINO route and as a result lost any credibility and lost any future support from a large portion of your constituents. You seem as a turncoat self focused politician. You did not cheat on your wife, but you did cheat on thousands of people who trusted you. You have no idea how many women cried and said I donated, and put up signs for him because I believed in him, NO MORE. Mr McCain your time to serve was in the past, because now it is scary to most to painfully watch a hero of the past, say and vote for the ridiculous agendas you now champion. Both of you fail miserably as public servants, by shielding yourselves from the public you were put into office to represent and serve. Invitation ONLY townhall meeting, you both need to be replaced by individual willing to serve not be served.
Capt, McCain. For a while I thought You were joining
the rightwingnuts. I am happy that You and Flake are
trying to do the right thing. What We are doing now is
obviously not working. (Com7thflt, Leading RM)
If those o us who are fortunate enough to be citizens were obligated to go through 13 years of every hardship our undocumented individuals will be forced to go through plus come up with all the assored fees, charges and whatever the pols can come up with I’d bet we would look on this in a definitely different way.
How did we get 2 senators that aren’t completely nuts? That’s so not like Arizona to elect reasonable republicans. I’m proud to say I voted for both those gents. (It was hard choice between Flake and Carmona but this helps me believe I made the right decision.
The citizenship thing is a distraction. What matters is legal status, which will be granted immediately – before any enforcement kicks in.
So, there’s really no difference between this bill and the last 2 ‘reform’ bills in 86 and 96. Both of them failed their promise on the enforcement side as government looked the other way once the public was no longer paying attention. Both bills led to vastly increased illegal immigration.
This one is worse. It doubles *legal* immigration in the bargain, all while unemployment is the highest in 30 years and the U.S. is becoming overpopulated anyway.
Thank God I live in a Conservative neighborhood. About 2 months ago I collected signatures to recall both. only one couple refused and one ex Nam vet refused to sign the McCain one for that reason only! All the others on the entire street gladly signed both, gladly signed and were very upset with Flake especially.
It’s a rare treat to see both of these guys making sense at the same time. Though I’m afraid I will still have to disagree with them on the need for spending billions of dollars to “make the border secure”.
The Tea Party Republicans should be thanking these guys for making it a long, expensive slog toward citizenship instead of complaining. And think how secure they should be feeling, knowing that another $50 billion dollars is going to the people reading their emails and listening to their phone conversations. And I thank God, too, that they live in Conservative neighborhoods (Saddlebrooke?) and rarely venture out where I live.