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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:

4. Border fence

Joshua Lott/REUTERS/File
A US border vehicle drives along the US and Mexico border fence in Naco, Ariz., in 2011.

  • By Daniel B. Wood Staff writer

In a speech on immigration reform in El Paso, Texas, in 2011, Obama said the building of a border fence is "now basically complete" – an assertion that Politifact found "barely true," since only 36 of the 649 miles of fencing was the robust, double-layer type that Congress had initially requested.

Moreover, in January 2011, the Obama administration ended a Bush-era border fence project that cost $1 billion and was supposed to bring high-tech sensors and cameras to the border. The decision ended "a long-troubled program that spent far too much of the taxpayers' money for the results it delivered," said Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I) of Connecticut at the time, according to CBS News.

Romney is in favor of building a stronger border fence, pointing to a February GAO report that found that that just 44 percent of the 2,000-mile-long border is under operational control, and just 15 percent is totally controlled. His website holds that he will “complete a high-tech fence to enhance border security" and “will ensure that we have the officers on the ground we need to gain control of the border.”

Obama has ridiculed such suggestions about a border fence, saying in El Paso: “Maybe they’ll need a moat. Maybe they’ll want alligators in the moat.” 

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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