Did Wilson toughen Obama?

COLUMBIA -- Immigration advocates said Monday that U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst earlier this month led to a "change of attitude" by President Obama.

Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a Washington-D.C.-based immigrant advocacy organization, said that the South Carolina congressman's "You lie!" comment during Obama's congressional speech on health care reform prompted the president to speak out about immigration rights.

Noorani said Obama made his position clear in a Sunday media blitz that health care reform should provide accessible and affordable coverage for the citizen children of immigrants who are in the country legally or illegally.

In his TV appearances, Obama sent a clear signal that he is not going to bend to "unrelenting pressure" and "fear mongering," Noorani said. He cited these comments as evidence of Obama's change in attitude.

The topic of immigration is expected to be raised as the full Senate Finance Committee takes up health care reform today, according to Anne Kim, economic program director with the moderate Democratic think tank Third Way. The senators will consider more than 560 amendments to the bill, which is one of five being debated by Congress.

Wilson, a Republican whose 2nd district runs from Columbia to Beaufort along the southwestern portion of the state, said health care reform needs to include a verification system to ensure that illegal immigrants are not given access to what he views as "taxpayer-funded, government-run health care."

The problems with the health care debate don't stop with immigration, Wilson said.

"We should be having a clear discussion about all of them, including the cost of a big government health care system and what a government-run health care system would mean for the quality of care," he said in a statement.

The congressman apologized to the president for his outburst, but refused to issue a second apology from the House floor. In turn, the House voted last week to admonish Wilson.

A button on his campaign Web site urges supporters to "Stand for Truth -- Stand for Joe Wilson today" with a running tally of donations that by Monday evening reached $2 million.

Wilson's Democratic challenger, Rob Miller, reportedly had raised upwards of $1.5 million since the outburst on Sept. 9.

In an interview with Jorge Ramos on Univision's Al Punto Sunday, Obama reiterated that his plan will not include "undocumented workers."

"As is true with all our various social insurance programs, you've gotta be an American citizen, or at least a legal resident in terms of access for those programs," Obama told Ramos, according to the media company. "Now, as I've said before, and as I did with (State Children's Health Insurance Program), I do think that children of legal residents, for example, should have access to care. That's good for all of us. And that's a principal that I will continue to fight for."

Covering the politics of the Lowcountry, South Carolina and the Nation.

In part, the controversy over providing access to illegal immigrants, or undocumented workers, deals with verifying who is a citizen and who is not.

Some argue that illegal immigrants will end up receiving health care by cheating the system, and the country needs to be proactive in protecting against that. Others believe that adding a verification system will create burdensome red tape and lead to discriminatory racial profiling.

Immigration advocates are also hoping to use health care reform as a means to change a long-standing Medicaid practice that requires legal immigrants to wait five years before they can gain coverage. States have the ability to cover part of that gap, but in South Carolina there has been no change to the federal policy, although the state is analyzing whether to grant coverage earlier to pregnant women and children.

Reach Yvonne Wenger at 803-799-9051 or ywenger@postandcourier.com.