WASHINGTON — Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham pressed President Barack Obama on the importance of border security at a rare White House meeting Tuesday and came away praising the president’s commitment to overhauling the nation’s immigration laws.
“I believe that the president is very committed to comprehensive immigration reform,” McCain said afterward. “Now does that mean he’s committed to anything we do? No, he has his positions on the issue as well, but I believe he is sincerely desirous of comprehensive immigration reform.”
McCain of Arizona and Graham of South Carolina are GOP two leaders of a bipartisan Senate group developing comprehensive immigration legislation. The pair met with Obama as the White House continued to work to repair damage from a leak earlier this month of draft immigration legislation Obama was preparing, which he’s said he’ll make public only if the Senate working group on immigration doesn’t move quickly enough.
The White House had no immediate comment on the meeting.
Also Tuesday, lawmakers and witnesses at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing said the H-2A visa program that lets farmers hire foreign agricultural workers is so unwieldy it accounts for only a very small percentage of the hundreds of thousands of farm workers hired in the U.S.
Lawmakers from both parties agreed that farmers should be allowed to hire foreign workers more easily, but they disagreed on how to accomplish the goal.
Front Section, Pages 8 on 02/27/2013