Illegal Workers a Key Issue for Republican Candidates

It does not take long to establish what Mitt Romney regards as one of the defining issues of the 2008 presidential race. On the front of his campaign leaflets he is pictured standing beside a huge fence on the US-Mexican border.

The Republican candidate takes a hardline stance on the estimated 12 million to 20 million illegal immigrants in the US. They should be given time to arrange their affairs and be sent home to "get in line with everyone else" for work visas, he told a debate in South Carolina on Thursday.

The US is experiencing the biggest wave of immigrants since the 19th century, mainly from Mexico and other parts of Central and South America, making illegal immigration a major issue in the 2008 election, particularly among Republicans. While large Hispanic populations have been part of life in states such as California since their foundation, the recent rise in the number of Hispanics in other areas has resulted in an often-racist backlash.

Michigan - which stages the next Republican primary, on Tuesday - has an estimated 100,000-150,000 illegal immigrants, according to the Washington DC-based Pew Hispanic Center.

The hostility towards them is partly based on fears that they are taking jobs in a state in which unemployment is running at about 15%.

Immigration is even more of an issue in South Carolina, one of the most socially conservative states in the US and where Republicans vote in their primary a week today. The state, renowned for the brutality of its politics, has one of the country's fastest-growing Hispanic populations, up 47% between 2000 and 2005. The number of illegal immigrants in the state is estimated at between 150,000 and 400,000.

Neal Thigpen, a political science professor at the Francis Marion University in South Carolina, said immigration was the "hot issue" in the state for Republicans. "You see [Hispanics] in grocery stores, and you see people fixing roofs and you see large numbers of Hispanics elsewhere," he said. "You do not have to be a super-bigot to find that alarming."

Immigration is a lesser issue for the Democrats. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are opposed to sending home America's illegal immigrants - for humanitarian reasons and because the US economy depends on them - but differ on how to bring them within the law.

For Republicans there is a divide, with John McCain adopting the most liberal position, having last year promoted a cross-party Senate compromise to offer a pathway to legalization.

The remainder of the pack are increasingly anti-illegal immigrants as the campaign goes on. At South Carolina's 2007 Republican convention McCain's representative was booed and pelted with paper balls owing to his boss's stance on immigration, said Thigpen. The Pew Hispanic Center's director, Paul Taylor, said 15% of Republican voters identified illegal immigration as an issue of concern.