U.S. Border Control

McCain campaign still dogged by his support for amnesty

Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., is inevitably asked at campaign events 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.

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’s co-sponsor of the immigration amnesty bill that died in Congress earlier this year is on the wrong side of the issue.

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.

Even as McCain enjoys a surge in the polls in New Hampshire and has attracted renewed attention from the media that had written him off a month ago, immigration remains a political minefield for him. The issue is probably as much responsible as anything for his failure to gain much traction in Iowa.

Even in New Hampshire, immigration is also a troubling issue for McCain.  It is as not as big a deal there as it is in Iowa, but it is still a concern. So, McCain's, 'I got your message/secure the borders first' line is intended to calm those concerns.

On McCain's Straight Talk Express campaign bus in Iowa in the fall, McCain reflected quietly about the issue, saying it was one of the most emotional he had ever seen.

This issue has dogged McCain for nearly a year, and he just cannot shake it. His campaign faltered in the spring largely over his stands on immigration and the Iraq War.

His aides say they knew both would be a problem for him, but they just didn't expect immigration to be as big a problem as it turned out to be.

'We knew it would be a minefield, but boy howdy,' McCain political strategist John Weaver is quoted saying in the current issue of Esquire. 'We might have been overly optimistic that we could tiptoe our way through it.'