Republicans harden tone on US immigration policy

By Tony Czuczka Jun 6, 2007, 13:25 GMT

Manchester, New Hampshire - Illegal migrants risk splitting the United States 'into a lot of Balkanised pieces.' Immigration reform championed by President George W Bush is fatally flawed. The nation's survival itself is at stake.

Drastic words - and they came from members of Bush's own Republican Party as its presidential candidates fought over immigration policy. How to handle the estimated 11-12 million foreigners living illegally in the US is fast heating up into a key debate for the 2008 election, and the biggest impact is likely to be on the Republican nomination race.

Even though the US has a jobless rate most European nations would envy, immigration has surged high onto the political agenda, fuelled in no small measure by Republican politicians in western states where migrants enter the US from Mexico.

Bush, wary of populist rhetoric in his party, backs a compromise plan in the US Congress that would tighten border security and oversight of employers, but also offers illegal migrants a path to US citizenship after they pay a fine, agree to learn English and meet other conditions.

Republican candidates clashed over the plan at a debate Tuesday in New Hampshire, much as Democrats argued two nights before over which of them had the strongest anti-war record on Iraq.

Both major parties hold their first presidential primary votes in the tiny New England state in early 2008, giving the 10 Republicans on stage at a local college an incentive to take strong stands.

Former New York mayor and Republican front-runner Rudolph Giuliani cited 'a fatal flaw' in the Bush-backed plan, saying it lacked a national database to identify everyone in the US who has come from a foreign country.

Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts and millionaire venture capitalist, claimed the bill would allow 'almost every' illegal alien to stay in the US.

'It's simply not fair to say those people get put ahead in the line of all the people who have been waiting legally to come to this country,' he said.

California Congressman Duncan Hunter, who champions plans to build a nearly 1,400-kilometre fence along the US-Mexican border, disputed the widespread argument that illegal immigrants generally do menial work that Americans just don't want to do.

Most dramatic was Tom Tancredo, 61, a congressman from the state of Colorado, who accused Spanish-speaking migrants of undermining the primacy of English - 'the glue that is supposed to hold us together as a nation.'

'We are becoming a bilingual nation. And that is not good. And that is the fearful part of this,' exclaimed Tancredo, who also used the Balkan breakup comparison.

Hispanics have surpassed blacks as the second-largest US ethnic group after whites, making up 14.4 per cent of the population in 2005, according to the US Census Bureau.

'We're talking about something that goes to the very heart of this nation: whether or not we will actually survive as a nation,' Tancredo said.

Most vulnerable in the debate is John McCain, the US senator from the border state of Arizona who challenged Bush for the 2000 Republican nomination and is running second behind Giuliani.

McCain helped craft the immigration plan, exposing him to attacks from almost all of his 2008 rivals. McCain, 69, has standing in his party in part because he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, but the Republican right tends to view him as too moderate on domestic issues.

He defended his immigration plan as the best possible solution for now. But toward the end of the two-hour debate, he pushed back with an emotional plea against bigotry toward Hispanics.

'They must come into our country legally. But they have enriched our culture and our nation, as every generation of immigrants before them,' McCain said.