South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham is very close to throwing his hat into the presidential ring.

As reported in USA TODAY, the 59-year-old of Republican says he is "98.6 percent sure" he will run for the Republican presidential nomination. And, if he does, he vows to approach the immigration issue in a vastly different manner than every other GOP contender.

According to Politico, Lindsey Graham is letting his donors know that he will likely make his presidential announcement on June 1.

"If I were president of the United States, I would veto any bill that did not have a pathway to citizenship," Graham explained to USA Today. "You would have a long, hard path to citizenship ... but I want to create that path because I don't like the idea of millions of people living in America for the rest of their lives being the hired help. That's not who we are."

Graham firmly believes the GOP will face an upcoming electoral disaster in 2016 if the party does not soften its position on immigration.

"We'll lose," said Graham, addressing what he calls the “big hole” his party has dug with Hispanics. “We've gone from 44 percent of the Hispanic vote (in the 2004 presidential election) to 27 percent (in 2012). You'll never convince me. ... It's not because of the immigration debate."

By and large the Republican contenders have maintained that border security must be tightened before the legal status of undocumented residents can even begin being talked about, and not one of the GOP’s official presidential candidates has yet to endorse a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

Graham notes the impracticality of shelving the issue, saying: “No Democratic Congress is going to give the Republican Party everything we want on border security until you tell them what happens to the 11 million."