In spite of the Republican Party’s strategy of attempting to come up with piecemeal immigration reform, Senator John McCain yesterday predicted that a comprehensive reform bill can still pass the House of Representatives, and warned of dire consequences for his party if it does not.
At a forum hosted by the Economic Party Institute and the AFL-CIO, McCain said that the fall was going to be of vital importance as they head into the next election cycle in 2014. McCain has declared that the Republican Party will never again win a national election if they fail to pass comprehensive immigration reform. “If we don’t do that, frankly I don’t see – I see further polarization of the Hispanic votes and the demographics are clear that the Republican Party cannot win a national election. That’s just a fact.”
McCain has declared that the existing system is effectively “de facto amnesty” as it is because undocumented immigrants are not going anywhere and that the great majority of the American public support a pathway to US citizenship providing that such immigrants get to the back of the queue, pay a fine and learn to speak English.
“It has a broader spectrum of support than any I have ever seen in my political career,” McCain noted, adding that the wide range of communities and groups who are supporting comprehensive immigration reform need to galvanize themselves into action over the course of the next few months in order to make sure that the legislation becomes reality.