By Shawn Zeller, CQ Staff

Republican presidential candidate John McCain can’t get any respect at this week’s Democratic National Convention in Denver, which will nominate Barack Obama for president this week. Even, it turns out, on immigration, an issue on which McCain not long ago led the charge for the type of policy that would seem to appeal to the recent immigrants and their advocates in the Democratic camp.

“I hope we’re all here to support Barack Obama . If not, I suggest you leave,” Joe Hansen, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union said Monday night during a union-sponsored event on immigration at the Colorado History Museum.

The Homeland Security Department swept up 260 of the union’s members in December 2006 during an immigration raid on meatpacking facilities operated by Swift & Co. in the northern Colorado city of Greeley. Ultimately, 1,300 workers who could not establish their citizenship or legal residency were arrested at Swift plants nationwide. Most were later deported.

It was “something you’d think would happen in Nazi Germany,” Hansen said. A union lawsuit is pending in federal district court in Dallas contending that Homeland Security violated the workers’ 4th Amendment rights against illegal search and seizure.

Hansen seemed to slip a bit when he acknowledged that there was “an attempt a few years ago by Congress” to deal with the problem by considering legislation providing for more legal guest workers and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who paid fines and learned English.

“It was,” Hansen said, “the McCain-Kennedy bill.”

He was referring to a proposal by Arizona Sen. McCain and Massachusetts Democratic colleague Edward M. Kennedy , which was debated in 2005 but ultimately was shelved because of opposition from Republican senators who preferred an approach that heavily emphasized enforcement of laws barring illegal immigration. McCain at the time endured a good deal of criticism from conservatives in his party for pursuing what they called an “amnesty bill” for immigration law violators.

But rather than be taken as offering a hint of praise for McCain’s past role on the issue, Hansen caught himself quickly, arguing that McCain has moved away from his more lenient position on assimilating illegal immigrants in favor of an enforcement-first approach while running for president.

Democrats are fond of quoting McCain’s statements during the Republican presidential nominating campaign — in which most of his rivals talked tough on illegal immigration — that he would not now vote for the McCain-Kennedy bill, and that his current position is “a lesson learned about what the American people’s priorities are, and their priority is to secure the borders.”

Hansen said “McCain seems to have forgotten he was part of that” earlier bill.