Anti-immigration Fervor may Fade in Election

PHOENIX (By Tim Gaynor, Reuters) February 9, 2008 — What a difference a few weeks make — at least when it comes to the U.S. presidential campaign and the hot issue of immigration.

When the White House race began in earnest with the first party nominating contests in Iowa in January, a broad field of Republican candidates vied to demonstrate their toughness on undocumented immigration, pledging more border enforcement and a crackdown on undocumented workers.

But with a narrowing of the races to secure the Republican and Democratic nominations ahead of November's general election, the issue could slip lower down the agenda as far as the candidates are concerned, analysts say.

"Looking forward to the general election, it's not that immigration is going to be redefined, it's just going to go away," predicted Steven Camarota, research director of the Center for Immigration Studies think-tank, which advocates reduced immigration.

Sen. John McCain emerged from coast-to-coast "Super Tuesday" nominating contests as the most likely Republican candidate and all but sealed the deal when his nearest rival, Mitt Romney, pulled out on Thursday.

McCain — viewed as soft on undocumented immigration by his conservative critics — co-sponsored a comprehensive immigration overhaul that was nixed by the Senate in June. His position earned McCain the lasting enmity of many Republican voters who will likely push him to take a harder line.

On the Democratic side, the race is down to Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton, who fought to a virtual draw in the February 5 voting. They both favor measures set out in the failed immigration bill, which sought to combine tougher border security with a path to legal status for many of the 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the shadows.

Early Republican front-runner Romney, who ran terse television advertisements promising get-tough measures on undocumented immigrants, is now out of the race. Mike Huckabee, who got endorsement from the Minutemen civilian border patrol group, is now seen as extremely unlikely to stop McCain.

"With Romney and Huckabee fading away, you essentially have different flavors of the same proposal," said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Texas.

Taking the middle ground

The question of what to do with millions of undocumented immigrants has been a hot-button topic for months in the United States, and consistently ranks among the top three issues for voters, alongside the economy and the war in Iraq.

Many Americans see undocumented immigrants as a drain on jobs and resources such as schools and health care. With a recession looming, anti-immigrant feeling may intensify.

Others argue that most work undocumented immigrants hard in often low-paid jobs that would otherwise go unfilled.

The candidates who are eventually picked to run for president by each party may try to avoid discussing immigration, although they are unlikely to be successful. When forced to address the issue, they could seek the hitherto elusive middle ground, analysts said.

"Presidential candidates from both parties are going to want to avoid it, and when they can't avoid it, they are going to want to straddle," said Tamar Jacoby, a senior research fellow at the Manhattan Institute think-tank, who supported the bipartisan Senate immigration bill.

"If you go too far in the restrictionist direction it's going to lose you Hispanics, if you go too far in the pro-immigration direction, it's going to lose you some backlash voters," she added.

The problem is especially acute for McCain, who needs the votes of his party's strident anti-immigration wing and will be under intense pressure to toughen his position.

The issue is certain to loom large in the race for Congress, where all 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs on November 4, as well as 35 Senate seats and 11 state governorships.

"Republicans running for .... Congress and state and local offices, almost all of them are going to run on undocumented immigration," said Frank Sharry, of the National Immigration Forum.

"Whereas most Americans think mass deportations are unrealistic and undesirable, there's a significant number of Republicans who think it is a desirable policy."