Whatever Happened to "Enforcement First"?

Instead of focusing on enforcing our immigration laws, Sen. Graham is attacking birthright citizenship. The GOP should not follow him off this cliff.

Until about five minutes ago, Senator Lindsey Graham was one of the chief proponents of comprehensive immigration reform.  Today he supports the elimination of birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants.

This is a deeply cynical shift, even by the low standard of politicians.

Rather than support an ‘enforcement first’ policy -- one that has potential at the state level, one that has political support, and one that could be enacted by a Republican Congress and a sympathetic Republican President -- Graham has decided to advocate the impossible.  In order to look tough for his South Carolina constituents, and in particular for the constituents who nominated Nikki Haley for Governor and will be looking to take Graham on in 2014, he has become the spokesperson for a constitutional amendment that will never become law.

This is not to deny the sound policy reasons for a reconsideration of birthright citizenship; and not only for the children of illegal aliens.  In June we learned that Furkan Dogan, an American citizen, was killed on the Turkish ship attempting to break the Gaza blockade.  Dogan left the United States at two to return to Turkey, his father’s native land.  He was born here while his father happened to be completing his MBA in Troy, New York.  It is at least a serious question whether our nation should grant citizenship to the child of non-citizen parents when neither child nor parent have any meaningful attachment to the United States.  In some sense, Dogan should have less of a claim on American citizenship than the child of an illegal alien who was born and raised in this country.

While the issue of birthright citizenship is a serious one, it is not the pressing one.

On Sunday, a Roman Catholic nun was killed in Virginia when an alleged drunk driver slammed into her car.   According to The Washington Post, the driver “has a record of numerous motor vehicle violations in recent years, including two-drunken-driving cases for which he served 20 days in jail.”  The suspect, an illegal immigrant from Bolivia had been detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after a 2008 arrest.  But, according to the Post, he “was released on his own recognizance pending a deportation hearing, which has yet to occur because of a backlog.”

The GOP is on sound ground when it makes the case for enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws.  Not only is it a critical issue to the millions of Americans who worry about the lawlessness and breakdown in civil order associated with illegal immigration, but it is an issue for all Americans who have lost faith in the federal government to perform even its most basic functions.

Instead of focusing on enforcement, Graham has decided to attack birthright citizenship.  However unfair, the resulting articles suggesting that the GOP wants to “repeal the Fourteenth Amendment” were entirely predictable.  And however meritorious this argument is as an academic matter, the GOP should not follow Graham off this cliff.