McCain showing ease in immigration rhetoric

Pushing reform, he asserts distance from party's right

Senator John McCain of Arizona celebrated the contributions of immigrants yesterday on the campaign trail in Scranton, Pa. (Gerald Herbert/ Associated Press)

SCRANTON, Pa. - During the Republican primaries, John McCain delicately balanced his record of pushing for immigration reform with satisfying his party's appetite for harsher restrictions.

Now in a general election against an opponent who broadly shares his views on the issue, McCain is showing greater ease asserting his distance from the anti-immigration right.

"I knew if I took on the issue of illegal immigration, I knew it would hurt me in my party," McCain told an Irish-American town hall yesterday in this city often described as the country's most heavily Irish. "I believe we have to have a commitment - because it's a national security issue as well as an economic issue as well as a humanitarian issue that we enact comprehensive immigration reform."

On his northeastern Pennsylvania trip, McCain pointedly denied coattails to a controversial immigration critic who has become one of the best Republican prospects to pick up a US House seat in a largely Democratic year.

Lou Barletta, the mayor of nearby Hazleton, became a favorite of followers of CNN host Lou Dobbs for passing ordinances to declare English the town's official language and forbid businesses from hiring or renting to illegal immigrants. Polls have indicated he is competitive with the district's longtime Democratic incumbent Paul Kanjorski - a success local operatives credit to the enduring power of anti-immigration politics in this largely working-class, white-ethnic district.

While recent McCain stops around the country have offered a boost for local down-ballot Republicans at the podium and on placards, no trace of Barletta's candidacy was evident during McCain's stop at Scranton's Masonic Temple. Instead the audience heard from a New York bar owner who introduced himself proudly as an "immigration activist" and paid tribute to McCain as a champion of more liberal laws that he said would aid future immigration from Ireland.

"Most of your parents and grandparents came here as poor immigrants and were welcomed here," said Ciaran Staunton of the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform. "Immigration is not a dirty word. Immigration is our fathers' word." While McCain received modest applause when he invoked "broken borders," a Dobbs catch phrase, the reception was far warmer when he celebrated immigrants' contributions to the United States. "This nation is stronger for the infusion of fresh blood and vitality that has come to this country in wave after wave," he said. "Everyone that has come to this country has enriched this nation, including our Hispanic citizenry."

If anything, McCain tried to move to Barack Obama's left on the issue of immigration, asserting Obama had backed out of parts of the tenuous reform deal that ultimately failed in the Senate. McCain claimed common cause with Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.

"I took votes that weren't popular. Senator Kennedy took votes that weren't popular," McCain said. "Senator Obama took a hike."

Sasha Issenberg can be reached at sissenberg@globe.com.