New York Times - Hispanic Hopeful for '08 Confronts Immigration

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Of all the candidates running for president, none have weathered more crosscurrents of the immigration battle than Gov. Bill Richardson, the New Mexico Democrat.

Mr. Richardson, whose mother is Mexican, is the governor of a border state with the highest percentage of Hispanics in the country. He has been entangled in the issue at home and a player in the ongoing struggle in Washington over rewriting the nation's immigration laws. He is the first Hispanic to seek the Democratic presidential nomination.

Mr. Richardson initially said he would support the immigration compromise announced earlier this week. But on Wednesday, he said that after reading it in detail, he had decided to oppose it, saying the measure placed too great a burden on immigrants -- tearing apart families that wanted to settle in the United States, creating a permanent tier of second-class immigrant workers and financing a border fence that Mr. Richardson had long opposed.

"This is fundamentally flawed in its current form, and I would oppose it," he said. "We need bipartisanship, but we also need legislation that is compassionate. I'm not sure that this is."

Mr. Richardson said he did not want to be pigeonholed as the immigration candidate, but the moment is forcing him to take a stand on a volatile issue that carries major risks for all the presidential candidates. In aligning himself with the view that the bill is insufficiently compassionate, he is in agreement with a key segment of his party, including many Hispanic voters, that want more focus on reuniting families.

At the same time, though, Mr. Richardson risks identifying his candidacy with the efforts in Congress to ease strictures against immigrants who are in this country illegally, exposing himself to the strong anti-immigration currents that have been unleashed by this battle.

He is the first major Democrat to call explicitly for defeat of the bill in its current form, a decision that he said would no doubt echo across the presidential playing field and in Washington. And his is a voice that carries particular weight: he grew up in Mexico, but went on to became a state governor who once declared a state of emergency in response to turmoil and violence on the border caused by illegal immigrants.

Mr. Richardson said he wanted his candidacy to be identified with other issues -- an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq, a national health care program -- rather than immigration. Revealingly, he addressed just four sentences of a 365-page political autobiography he wrote in advance of the presidential campaign, "Between Worlds: The Making of An American Life," to immigration.

Still, Mr. Richardson said he realized that might be difficult in this political environment in which the immigration debate was stirring so many passions across the country. He said he had to speak out against what he suggested was an anti-immigrant fervor, be it from television news hosts like Lou Dobbs or Republican candidates for president.

"I was just very disheartened by all the Republican candidates at the debates," he said. "They were trying to overtake each other over who could be the most anti-immigrant. That is not going to help them in a general election: It might help them in a primary."

"I'm going to be speaking out on this issue, given that I'm a border governor and my heritage," he said. "Maybe it won't help me nationally -- but I believe it is my responsibility to do that and not take a mushy position. I notice everyone else is taking murky positions."

Mr. Richardson's personal history illustrates the struggles that families endure to obtain citizenship in the United States. In November 1947, when his mother was pregnant with him, Mr. Richardson's father, an American banker who wanted his son to be a United States citizen, sent her on a train to Pasadena, Calif., where she gave birth. The mother then went back with her newborn to Mexico City, where Mr. Richardson remained until he returned to the United States at age 13.

Mr. Richardson made mention of this aspect of his life earlier this week when he formally announced his candidacy in Los Angeles; at the time he said he was beginning his campaign there because he thought the state's substantial Hispanic population made him a strong contender to win its Feb. 5 primary. "I was born here because my father, an American citizen, wanted me to be born in America," he said.

Mr. Richardson has over the years been identified with many sides of the immigration debate. He drew a storm of criticism from Hispanic groups two years ago when he declared a state of emergency at the Mexican border, warning that illegal immigrants were jeopardizing the safety of his state.

But he has vehemently opposed construction of a fence on its border with Mexico. He supported letting illegal immigrants obtain driver's licenses and legislation that would permit their children to obtain college scholarships.

Mr. Richardson said he supported some sort of immigration bill that would permit people who entered the United States illegally to become citizens, and particularly opposed anything that would divide families, echoing a main criticism by opponents of the current bill. But he sounded like one of his Republican counterparts when asked if he would use the word "amnesty" to describe what should be granted people who had entered the country illegally.

"I don't use that word -- no, no, no," he said. "I want a legalization program that does not provide amnesty."

Mr. Richardson said he felt closest to the stance of Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and another presidential candidate -- or at least where Mr. McCain was two years ago in drafting an immigration bill with Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts.

F. Chris Garcia, a University of New Mexico political science professor who has followed Mr. Richardson's career, said the governor's position on the bill in Congress reflected what he described as the often nuanced positions Mr. Richardson had taken in running New Mexico. Professor Garcia noted that Mr. Richardson had said that he did not want to be defined as simply a Hispanic politician, and suggested that the governor's outspokenness now could work against that effort.

"Governor Richardson has to be particularly careful because this is a very controversial issue and he doesn't want to be branded as taking a position that would draw attention to his ethnicity," he said.

But Brian Sanderoff, the head of a New Mexico polling firm, said Mr. Richardson had handled the issue adroitly in New Mexico, presenting himself as both tough and compassionate. Mr. Sanderoff said that might serve Mr. Richardson well as he tried to navigate this more complicated national terrain.

"This is typical Bill Richardson," he said. "Bill Richardson tends to take a middle of the road empathetic position with an act of toughness with it. That's Bill. He's hard to pigeonhole as being definitely anti-immigration or pro-immigration. He's going to take a middle stance where he'll seem to have positions on both sides of the fence."

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