Obama vs. Romney 101: 5 ways they differ on immigration

President Obama has staked out positions favored by Latino voters on immigration issues. Mitt Romney has tried to cast himself somewhere between the staunchest anti-illegal immigration activist of his party and Obama. Here are the two candidates' positions on five issues:

5. Sanctions for hiring illegal immigrants

Julio Cortez/Houston Chronicle/AP/File
Federal immigration agents conduct a raid at Action Rags USA, a second-hand clothing warehouse in Houston, on June 25, 2008.

In another example of how Obama has shifted the executive branch's policies on illegal immigration, the administration is increasingly targeting employers of illegal immigrants – rather than the illegal-immigrant employees – with tough charges and fines, according to a New York Times report in May. In doing so, the report said, the administration has largely forgone high-publicity factory raids in favor of longer-term investigations.

For his part, Romney lauds Arizona's use of the E-Verify federal database. Currently, all federal contractors have to use E-Verify to confirm that an employee is in the country legally. In 2007, Arizona passed a law requiring all companies in the state check their employment rosters through E-Verify. A first offense brings a suspension of a business license; a second brings its revocation. A study by the Public Policy Institute of California found that E-Verify was responsible for 17 percent of Arizona's working-age illegal immigrants – or, about 92,000 undocumented workers – leaving the workforce in one year.  

"I think you see a model here in Arizona," Romney said in a February Republican presidential debate. 

Obama's take on E-Verify is more nuanced. "E-Verify can be an important enforcement tool," he said at a press conference in June 2011. But he also said he shares the concerns of civil liberties groups, who contend the database contains too many errors. "I don't want is a situation in which employers are forced to set up a system that they can't be certain works," Obama said. "And we don't want to expose employers to the risk where they end up rejecting a qualified candidate for a job because the list says that that person is an illegal immigrant, and it turns out that the person isn't an illegal immigrant."

A 2011 report for the federal General Accountability Office found that E-Verify correctly confirmed the work eligibility of 97.4 percent of employees checked in fiscal year 2009. But it acknowledged that identity thieves can game the system. E-Verify might be clearing as many as half of illegal immigrants run through the system, because they are using the valid work credentials of someone else. 

For a full list of stories about how Romney and Obama differ on the issues, click here.

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