Senator Lindsey Graham on Immigration

Today's meeting at the White House about CIR was a success and demonstrated that the administration is committed to passing CIR. It appears the efforts are bipartisan.
Via Immigration Impact:

According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Chairman of the Immigration, Refugee and Border Security Subcommittee, has tapped Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to help garner GOP support for a comprehensive immigration bill this year. While not always voting in favor of common sense solutions to our broken immigration system, Senator Graham has shown himself to be at least one Republican leader who understands the importance of our nation’s changing demographic—especially in his home state of South Carolina—on future electoral races.

In 2007, Sen. Graham supported S.1639, an immigration bill co-sponsored by Sens. Jon McCain and Ted Kennedy, despite cries of “Grahamnesty” from his own party. While the bill ultimately failed, Sen. Graham was booed at the 2007 GOP Party Convention where he defended the bill. He also defended himself in an interview shortly thereafter on Fox’s Hannity & Colmes:

The 12 million need to be dealt with now. And they can be made right with the law. They can pay fines. They’ll have to go back to their home country before they can become citizens. They’ll have to learn English. I’m tired of putting problems off. I want to secure the border. I want to verify who is here through tamper-proof I.D., and I want to deal with the 12 million now.

While it’s true that Sen. Graham has opposed the Dream Act, voted for more border fencing, and stronger enforcement measures in the past, he does realize the high price involved with doing nothing at all. In a speech at NCLR’s 2007 Capital Awards, Sen. Graham acknowledged that empty anti-immigrant rhetoric is not going to fix our broken system.

Perhaps Sen. Graham hopes that members of his own flailing party realize, as he said during Justice Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing, that “elections have consequences”—especially considering that the immigrant population in his home state of South Carolina has grown roughly 40% in the last ten years.