The state of the political debate over immigration might have been demonstrated fairly concisely when John McCain was speaking at a town hall meeting June 19 in St. Paul.

A participant asked the likely Republican nominee for president about the issue, noting that many Minnesota industries depend on the labor of immigrants, both legal and illegal, but that there were also problems with immigrants who “don’t know our laws, don’t read our language.”

The audience was quiet while McCain explained some of the details of his immigration proposal. Then he said this: “We must secure our borders. We must secure our borders, and that is a federal responsibility.”

At which point he stopped speaking, letting the applause that filled the Landmark Center die down.

But there was something else he wanted to tell the Minnesotans on hand.

“People who are here illegally are also God’s children,” McCain said. “And we have to address this issue in a humane and compassionate fashion.”

The crowd was silent.

Divided on the issue

Illegal immigration matters to many Minnesotans and to voters across the country, and Republican-leaning voters, at least, seem to want a hard line.

But in Washington, the hard-liners and those on the opposite side have reached a stalemate, and it appears other topics have overtaken immigration in the 2008 election.

That McCain was standing there as the presumptive Republican nominee was a piece of evidence. The Arizona senator had attempted to broker a compromise on immigration that would have allowed some illegal immigrants to remain in America and eventually become citizens.

Mitt Romney and others seeking the Republican nomination attacked McCain’s immigration stance, to no avail.

“It’s an important issue, but Republicans can’t speak with one clear voice on this,” said Joe Kunkel, a political science professor at Minnesota State University. “There’s kind of a nativist part and then there’s kind of a business-realities part of it.”

And after GOP candidates hit the issue hard in 2006, and suffered one of their worst elections in decades, many are ready to try other topics in 2008.

“In some ways, the illegal immigration issue may have passed its peak in the last election as Republicans tried to highlight that,” Kunkel said. “It doesn’t seem to have worked that much, and Republicans are divided on the issue.”