Immigration debate cools off

By Richard Cowan - Analysis

ST. PAUL (Reuters) - Immigration, once the hottest U.S. political issue, is on a backburner this election season with little firm evidence it will advance, no matter who moves into the White House in January.

Calls for securing the southern U.S. border and overhauling outdated immigration laws exploded onto the national scene in 2006 with demonstrations in several big cities. Washington failed to work out a broad deal the following year.

Two months before the presidential election, interest in immigration reform has given way to worries over energy prices. That, coupled with different strategies for wooing the votes of the country's growing Hispanic population and a sour U.S. economy, could be why immigration reform is dormant.

"Despite the fact that immigration was the hottest issue, the thing that everyone talks now is energy," said Rep. Adam Putnam of Florida, a member of the House of Representatives' Republican leadership team, during a brief interview.

As global oil prices surged this year, hitting U.S. consumers hard because of their gas-guzzling ways, Republicans in Congress have wanted to talk about little else lately other than expanding domestic oil drilling.

Immigration reform was once a signature issue for Sen. John McCain, who accepts the Republican Party's nomination this week as their choice to run against Democrat Barack Obama in the November 4 election.

Upholding his reputation as a political maverick, the Arizona senator had infuriated many Republican conservatives with his efforts to allow some who came to the United States illegally to work their way to permanent legal status.

McCain also has embraced President George W. Bush's project to build a 670-mile fence separating the United States and Mexico to keep illegal immigrants out. Conservatives insist the fence along the southern U.S. border is an important national security tool.

Democrats have promised to pass an immigration reform bill during Obama's first year in office. But plenty of details need to be worked out and efforts likely would be slowed by Republicans not wanting to hand Obama any major legislative victories, according to a former customs and border enforcement official close to the immigration debate.

U.S. ECONOMY NEEDS WORKERS

Whether the passion for immigration reform flares again will depend in part on the health of the U.S. economy. Rep. Duncan Hunter, a California Republican who opposes broad reforms, said rising unemployment in the United States is now discouraging both parties from raising the issue.

But U.S. companies, many of which back broad reforms, want a more efficient way for bringing in more foreign workers, from low-paid temporary farm hands to nursing home helpers and high-paid high-tech specialists.

"Both (political) parties are ducking the immigration issue," said Tom Donohue, head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "They don't want to get in the middle of it because everyone wants the Hispanic vote" that could be critical in many states this year, he said.

That means, he said, that immigration reform advocates will ride their support among Hispanics to victory, while opponents, many of them conservative Republicans, will try to avoid the topic.

The tough part of immigration reform, which pits McCain against his party's conservatives, is "amnesty," or whether an estimated 12 million foreigners who came to the United States illegally, should be allowed to eventually stay.