Senator’s Bid to Fix Immigration Starts in His Backyard

From The New York Times:

A five-minute lunch break at Chick-fil-A was Senator Lindsey Graham’s only unscheduled stop of the day.

But he had barely stepped inside the fast food restaurant here last week before a constituent was upon him, urging Mr. Graham, a South Carolina Republican, to relay a message to his colleagues in Washington: “Make ’em understand the word ‘illegal,’ ” said Stephen Lewis, 72, a retired Marine. “If you’re not here legal, be punished or thrown out of this country for it.”

The problem is that Mr. Graham is part of an influential bipartisan group in the Senate that would do just the opposite: take the 11 million illegal immigrants already in the country and, after what he calls a “long” and “challenging” path, make them legal.

Nonetheless, Mr. Graham shook Mr. Lewis’s hand and launched into his well-rehearsed pitch: Those immigrants are here illegally, Mr. Graham agreed, and they are going to have to get right with the law, pay a fine and back taxes, learn English, and head to the back of the line before they can become citizens. Does that seem fair?

“Exactly,” said Mr. Lewis, seemingly convinced, if wary.

Mr. Graham, 57, a two-term senator immersed in multiple issues on Capitol Hill, will have to continue to win over voters like Mr. Lewis if he hopes to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws — and fend off a possible primary challenge himself.

“I think we’re at a point now where 2013 is the best chance to have a comprehensive immigration bill that I’ve seen,” Mr. Graham told a reporter trailing him for two days, over a rib-eye at a local restaurant last week. “I am confident.”

He has reason to be. The mood — both nationally and in his home state — has changed significantly since Mr. Graham first tried an immigration overhaul, in 2007. At the time, the effort was derisively dubbed Grahamnesty and Mr. Graham found himself further marginalized by the rise of the Tea Party in 2010, even censured by several county Republican organizations in South Carolina.