Romney And McCain, 'Hispanic' Candidates?

Romney comes in for rougher treatment than McCain because of his tough rhetoric about illegal immigrants and secure borders. McCain, in contrast, has endorsed a type of immigration reform that would give illegal immigrants a chance to become citizens.

"The irony . . . of course makes many of us chuckle," says Mario Solis-Marich, a Los Angeles talk radio host and the blogger behind Nuestra Voice. "Beyond the chuckling, there's certainly some interesting questions that this poses."

Romney "needs to come out of his Mexican-heritage closet," Solis-Marich writes in his blog. In an interview, he adds, "If his family has a history of knowing how fluid the southern border of this country has been, how is it, and why is it, to this day they have what I believe is such a disdain for immigrants?"

Romney writes only briefly of his family's Mexican history in his 2004 memoir, "Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership, and the Olympic Games." He rarely discusses it on the campaign trail, because it hardly ever comes up, says spokesman Kevin Madden.

"He's readily explained to those who ask that his father was born there and did live there at a time," Madden says. "He never talks about this in the context of immigration."

Romney lauds the contribution of legal immigrants and reserves his condemnation for illegal immigrants. The circumstances of his own forebears' passing back and forth are somewhat murky, but it has never been proved they crossed illegally. At the time, there were fewer rules to obey.

In "The Story of George Romney" (1960), biographer Tom Mahoney says a fellow Mormon obtained permission from Mexican President Porfirio D¿az for Romney's great-grandfather and other Mormons to establish colonies. But some commentators have said that Mexico did not permit polygamy at the time, and that the new colonists had promised to be law-abiding.

"If true, [Mitt Romney's great-grandfather] then knowingly arrived in direct violation of Mexican immigration law," Henry Fernandez, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, writes in his blog.

Among the reasons legal and illegal immigrants come to the United States today is to escape persecution and strife.

Since George Romney's parents were American citizens, having been born in the United States, they had a legal right to return. But it was easier said than done. The Mormons negotiated with the revolutionaries for safe passage for the women and children to reach El Paso by train. The men took to the desert on horseback, rebuffing armed attack, and crossed into New Mexico.

From El Paso -- does this sound familiar? -- the Romneys made it to Los Angeles. Mitt Romney's grandfather worked as a carpenter. The family was so large that the Romneys had trouble finding affordable housing, and some landlords refused to rent to them.

They and their fellow Mormon refugees were "the first displaced persons of the 20th century," George Romney later said.