McClatchy notes that a new Spanish-language ad from John McCain is grossly misleading in blaming Barack Obama for blocking immigration reform legislation in the Senate. The truth is that the legislation was torpedoed by Republicans in the Senate, not Democrats. What's more, beginning in 2005 Obama had worked with a group of Senators – including McCain – to craft legislation for comprehensive immigration reform. Thus, as the Senate was considering the resulting immigration bill in May of 2006, McCain spoke in the chamber thanking several of his colleagues by name for their support during the process. Among those McCain praised was Barack Obama.

Here's the text of the new ad (translated from Spanish) being aired in the western swing states New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada:

Obama and his Congressional allies say they are on the side of immigrants. But are they?

The press reports that their efforts were 'poison pills' that made immigration reform fail.

The result:

No guest worker program. No path to citizenship. No secure borders. No reform.

Is that being on our side?

Obama and his Congressional allies ready to block immigration reform, but not ready to lead.

Here's the video:

Back in June the McCain campaign released a lengthier attack on Obama's record on the immigration bill. It identifies 5 amendments that he'd backed to the legislation, which McCain would have people believe doomed immigration reform.

Barack Obama voted for five ‘poison pill’ amendments designed by special interests to kill the immigration reform deal.

Except the amendments weren't designed to kill immigration reform. They were fairly ordinary modifications of the bill that reasonable people could and did support. For example one of those five amendments, adopted in the Senate with support of both Democrats and Republicans, lowered the number of guest-worker visas annually from 400,000 to 200,000. That's not a "poison pill", and these amendments (most of which failed) weren't what killed the immigration bill.

As McClatchy rightly points out, the immigration bill was doomed by Republican opposition. Senate Republicans blocked two attempts to cut off debate on the reform legislation in June of 2007, effectively preventing the bill's passage. In each of those two cloture votes, both McCain and Obama voted to limit debate (and end the Republican filibuster).

So John McCain is rewriting history when he blames Obama and the Senate Democrats for the defeat of immigration reform. Here's one measure of how false McCain's historical revisionism is. Two years ago on the floor of the Senate McCain credited several Democrats, including Obama, for helping to shepherd the immigration reform bill to a vote.

After several weeks of extensive debate and consideration of numerous and complicated amendments, the Senate is about to move to final passage on S. 2611, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act…And of course, I commend Senator Kennedy, who is perhaps the leading expert on this difficult issue…I also want to thank Senators Brownback, Lieberman, Graham, Salazar, Martinez, Obama, and Dewine for their shared commitment to this issue, and working to ensure this bill moved successfully intact through the legislative process.

That is from a McCain press release at his own Senate website.

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