Biden to Latino group: ‘Romney wants you to show your papers, but he won't show us his'

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Vice President Joe Biden will tell the Latino rights group National Council of La Raza Tuesday that "Mitt Romney wants you to show your papers, but he won't show us his." Biden's brutal broadside blends Obama campaign attacks on the Republican standard-bearer over his hard-line immigration policy and his refusal to release past tax returns.

The Obama campaign included the vitriolic attack in excerpts of Biden's prepared remarks to the organization's annual conference in Las Vegas. The vice president is scheduled to address the group at 3:15 ET.

"When his father, George Romney, was a candidate for President in 1968, he released 12 years of tax returns because, as he said, 'One year could be a fluke, perhaps done for show,'" Biden says in the excerpts.

"His son has released one year of his tax returns … making a lie of the old adage: Like father, like son," the vice president says. "Mitt Romney wants you to show your papers, but he won't show us his."

Recent polls have shown Obama with a commanding lead over Romney among Latino voters, often described as the fastest-growing population in America. But with an approval rating generally in the 40s and voters angry about the fitful economic recovery, the president has been leaving nothing to chance as he works to reassemble the coalition that powered his historic 2008 run. The Obama campaign has been pounding Romney on the issue of immigration for weeks. But Biden's remarks are the highest-profile attack to date that combine that attack with the campaign's relentless demands that the former Massachusetts governor release more than the one year of tax returns that he has made public.

In the prepared remarks, Biden warns the organization that "there are voices among us who fear your inclusion" and warns that a Romney presidency would roll back civil rights and voting rights.

"Imagine a Justice Department that supports, rather than challenges, continued efforts to suppress the right to vote," he says. "Because that's what will happen if they win."

Biden also knocks Romney's spending plans, warning that social spending would pay the price if Congress enacted the Republican's tax-cut proposals.

"The impact on the Hispanic community would be devastating—and the effects would last a generation," the vice president charges. "And he says the President is out of touch?"