McCain defends immigration work

Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Friday defended his work on the immigration bill, rejecting a rival's claim that his work on the derailed measure undercuts his White House bid.

"I do what I think is right," McCain told a town-hall audience in Iowa. "The people of Arizona sent me to Washington to do the hard things. They didn't expect me to go there and say 'no' and do nothing about our broken border."

McCain stood alone among the GOP candidates in embracing the bipartisan bill which would tighten borders and offer employers more temporary workers from abroad in addition to providing lawful status to an estimated 12 million illegal aliens.

The four-term Arizona senator has drawn criticism from several of his rivals, including hard-line immigration foe, Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo.

"I think that the silver lining in this bill and the fact that we've debated this bill and the fact that he's pushed it so hard, it probably means there will never be a President John McCain," Tancredo told Iowa Public Television's "Iowa Press" program on Friday.

The long-shot candidate said the bill's failure to win a crucial test vote Thursday night in the Senate, in part because of Republican opposition, "is sort of the death knell for John McCain's campaign."

McCain dismissed those comments as irrelevant and vowed to push ahead for immigration reform.

"They expect me to act and preserve our security and also address the human side of it. Two-hundred people died in the desert of Arizona last year trying to come across, so I will continue to work to try to address the issue of illegal immigration," McCain said.

McCain said he was unsure about the future of the measure, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he wanted to bring it up again. He didn't place blame for the bill's stumble.

"Obviously none of us did as good a job as we should have, otherwise we would have passed it," McCain said. "But I think the president worked very hard on it. A lot of us worked very hard."

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Associated Press Writer Henry C. Jackson contributed to this report.