Opinion: O’Reilly vs. McCain on immigration
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When John McCain launched his Spanish-language website earlier this week, I commented that immigration would be a tough issue for him during the general election (and possibly problematic for Democrats too).
Even Bill O’Reilly gave him a gentle jab when McCain appeared on his show yesterday. Here’s an excerpt of the interview from Fox:
O’REILLY: I know. All right, the issue that’s hurt you the most among conservatives is the immigration issue. You know that? In fact, you and I had a nice chat in May of 2001. I don’t know if you remember that. MCCAIN: I tried to forget it.
(A quick summary for Opinion L.A. readers who have forgotten: O’Reilly said he wanted troops on the border; McCain said he didn’t. Repeat several times, with McCain getting fewer and fewer words in and O’Reilly getting louder and mentioning the Mexican government’s handing out ‘fanny packs’ to border-crossers.)
O’Reilly moves to the current immigration controversy of choice -- so-called sanctuary cities:
O’REILLY: OK. I hammered you. I hammered you. I told you you’ve got to crack down on the border. Your own state is getting overrun. I was right. Will you concede that? MCCAIN: I will concede that the American people want the border secured first. O’REILLY: OK, but Arizona, your home state, has been punished by rampant illegal immigration, economically, socially. In Maricopa County now, they’re cracking down, probably too much, but the people are furious. Now my question is this. It’s a simple question. I asked this to Hillary Clinton as well. Sanctuary cities — San Francisco, Los Angeles, and on and on. Phoenix, no longer. The mayor changed — are harboring criminal illegal aliens, you know? There was an 18-year-old high school football star, whose mother is serving in Iraq as a sergeant, murdered by a criminal illegal alien with a long rap sheet. Let out of the L.A. County jail. ICE was never informed. The next president, senator, has to crack down on the sanctuary cities. Will you?
(O’Reilly misrepresents the situation -- here’s the editorial board’s explanation.)
MCCAIN: Obviously, I don’t approve or would oppose sanctuary cities, but again, it’s a larger problem. And that is our failure to carry out a federal responsibility to enact immigration reform. That means securing our borders first, a temporary-worker program, which we need. It is associated with tamperproof biometric documents. Anyone who doesn’t have that is prosecuted. O’REILLY: Can’t work. MCCAIN: It works. O’REILLY: OK. MCCAIN: And third of all, to address the issue of the 12 million people. O’REILLY: Health insurance, and again, it is — here’s the folks. They’re going, I can’t afford to go to the doctor.
O’Reilly went easy. His conciliatory ‘OK,’ and the quick switch to health insurance (and mocking Barack Obama’s healthcare plan), is more evidence that conservatives don’t want to touch immigration when it comes to their canddiate.
McCain, nonetheless, does a decent job standing his ground on a guest worker program, considering that appearing easy on illegal immigrants won’t endear him to conservatives (especially when he does it on TV with O’Reilly, rather than at a Texas border town hall).
And despite McCain’s moving closer to his former stance, he’s still not as liberal as Obama on the point: the Democratic candidate supports drivers licenses for illegal immigrants. Hillary Clinton stopped short of that, too.