With the midterm elections just weeks away, Democrats and Republicans are making their speeches acrosses the country and they are (still) talking immigration. Contrary to what they would have you think though, the Democratics are not all about roads to legalization and guest worker programs. In fact some Democrats sound downright Republican when it comes to immigration.

In North Carolina, Heath Shuler, a former Washington Redskins quarterback who is running for Congress, ran a television advertisement declaring he would never “give amnesty” to illegal immigrants. In Georgia, Representative John Barrow has played up his vote to build a fence on the southwest border. In Ohio, John Cranley, the challenger to the Republican incumbent, Representative Steve Chabot, has accused Mr. Chabot of voting to legalize hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants.

In this state, Representative Harold E. Ford Jr., the Democrat running for Senate, reminds voters repeatedly that federal agents raided his Republican opponent’s business and found four illegal immigrants working there. Mr. Ford also proudly describes his vote for the border security legislation passed by the House last year, a measure condemned as anti-immigrant by many Democrats in Congress.

But Democrats are friends of the underdog, in this case undocumented immigrants trying to make a better life for themselves and their families? Not so, especially in more conservative states.

The tough border security message is carried mostly by Democrats in the South and the Midwest, where a surge of Hispanic immigration is transforming small towns and cities. In such communities, some candidates are deriding legalization as amnesty, proclaiming border security as their priority or criticizing Republican challengers as failing to stem the tide of illegal immigration.

This summer, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee withdrew an advertisement from its Web site displaying images of people scaling a border fence along with images of Osama bin Laden and President Kim Jong Il of North Korea. Several Hispanic groups had complained that it unfairly likened immigrants to terrorists.

Of great concern to many conservative leaning Democrats is that supporting the rights of immigrants may look like its at the expense of citizens and documented residents, even though studies show that undocumented workers do not take jobs from or threaten the lives of citizens and documented workers (no matter what Lou Dobbs and Pat Buchanan say).

So is there a political party that is welcoming or at the very least understanding of immigrants, regradless of documentation status? Doesn’t look like it which means that November 7th will present voters with some tough choices.

Via / The New York Times (Registration Required)