Immigration splits 2008 White House hopefuls

One of the trickiest tightropes being walked by the 2008 US presidential candidates, all of them descended from immigrants, is how to tackle illegal immigration as they bid for the White House.

Democrats are forced into a delicate dance around the thorny issue, scrambling to court the booming Hispanic-American population without irking party moderates, analysts said.

“Democrats are badly divided on the immigration issue. They want to appeal to Latinos (Hispanics seen as favorable to liberal US immigration policy) but don’t want to alienate more moderate and conservative factions of the party,” Michael Shifter, vice president of the Inter-American Dialogue, told AFP.”*

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