McCain Still Dogged by Immigration Issue

Dec. 26, 2007 — -- When Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., campaigns in Iowa this week, sooner or later, he will surely be asked at a town hall event about one issue that has bedeviled him for months: illegal immigration.

It comes up at almost every stop, no matter what state he's in — Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan or South Carolina.

It was the first question from the audience when he triumphantly announced the Joe Lieberman endorsement last week in New Hampshire.

It was the first question at the final event of that same long day.

For many Americans, especially conservative Republicans, immigration is one of their most important concerns and a key determinant of whom they'll vote for in the primaries.

For many of those same voters, McCain — co-sponsor of the immigration bill that died in Congress earlier this year — is on the wrong side of the issue.

The McCain-Kennedy bill — there's nothing like coupling your name to Ted Kennedy's to automatically enrage some conservatives — would create a path to so-called earned citizenship for some of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States. To some voters, earned citizenship for someone who came into the country illegally is tantamount to amnesty.

These days, when questions about immigration are asked, McCain says he "got the message."

"The message is the American people want the border secured," McCain told the woman who asked him at the event in Weare, N.H., about his stand on "illegal aliens."

"I will secure the border and I would have the border state governors certify that their border are secure," he said, "Then, we would move onto other issues," such as what to do about those illegal immigrants already in the country.

He hasn't exactly renounced the bill he championed in the spring, but he has fine-tuned his position and changed the emphasis to assure the skeptics and critics — and there are many — that dealing with the fate of those already in the country only occurs after the borders are secured.

"I still believe we have to have a temporary worker program that works and addresses the issues of the 12 million people that are here illegally," McCain said in Weare, racing through this part of his answer in much the same way announcers do with the disclaimers at the end of pharmaceutical commercials.