HOWARD LIPIN / Union-Tribune Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., addressed the National Council of La Raza conference yesterday at the San Diego Convention Center. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., spoke there Sunday.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain yesterday vigorously disputed his opponent's assertion that he had backed away from his own comprehensive plan to overhaul the nation's immigration laws.

“I do ask for your trust that when I say I remain committed to fair, practical and comprehensive immigration reform, I mean it,” the Arizona senator told the National Council of La Raza conference at the San Diego Convention Center. “In all due modesty, I think I have earned that trust.”

McCain and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., sponsored legislation to increase security along the U.S.-Mexico border, create a guest-worker program and create opportunities for citizenship for the estimated 12 million people who are in the country illegally. The bill died in Congress in June 2007 on a procedural vote.

On Sunday, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama addressed the same convention and said McCain backed off his immigration plan to appease conservatives during the primary campaign. The Illinois senator made similar assertions in recent addresses to the National Association of Latino Elected Officials and the League of United Latin American Citizens. McCain also appeared before those groups.

“I did not use those occasions to criticize Senator Obama,” said McCain. “I would prefer not to do so today. But he suggested in his speeches there and here that I turned my back on comprehensive reform out of political necessity. I feel I must, as they say, correct the record.

“At a moment of great difficulty in my campaign, when my critics said it would be political suicide for me to do so, I helped author with Senator Kennedy comprehensive immigration reform, and fought for its passage,” McCain said. “I cast a lot of hard votes, as did the other Republicans and Democrats who joined our bipartisan effort. So did Senator Kennedy. I took my lumps for it without complaint.”

McCain contended that Obama voted for an amendment designed to derail the immigration plan at the behest of labor unions.

“Senator Obama declined to cast some of those tough votes,” he said. “He voted for and even sponsored amendments that were intended to kill the legislation, amendments that Senator Kennedy and I voted against.”

Obama's campaign said yesterday that dozens of immigration rights groups, including La Raza, supported the amendment, which would have required that a merit-based evaluation system for immigrants be subject to renewal after five years.

Anti-illegal immigration activists have denounced McCain's plan as granting law-breakers “amnesty,” a term McCain rejects. A group of activists yesterday picketed in front of the convention center as McCain spoke inside, as they did Sunday during Obama's appearance.

Dominic Harkay, 40, of El Cajon carried a sign that referred to McCain as “Juan McAmnesty.”

Online: Union-Tribune politics editor Michael Smolens will take your questions on national and state politics during a live online chat today from 10 to 11 a.m. at uniontrib.com/chat

“He's just pandering to the, quote, Hispanic community,” Harkay said. “He's saying one thing but doing another by trying to shove amnesty down America's throat.”

Across Harbor Drive were several protesters from Veterans for Peace.

Jan Ruhman, 61, of Rancho Bernardo said he opposed McCain's continued support of the war in Iraq. He also criticized McCain's opposition to the new GI Bill.

“Clearly as veterans, we would have thought that we'd receive better treatment from John McCain,” said Ruhman, who served with the Marines in Vietnam.

McCain has said he is concerned that the greatly expanded educational benefits in the proposed GI Bill would encourage too many people to leave the military.

According to the San Diego Police Department, there were up to 80 demonstrators at one point, about 50 of them anti-illegal immigration activists and the rest with Veterans for Peace.

Inside the convention center, McCain was briefly heckled by anti-war demonstrators as he began to speak.

During the speech, McCain touted his support for the Colombian and Central American Free Trade agreements as vital to the prosperity of the hemisphere. Obama opposes the trade agreements.

“Lowering trade barriers creates more and better jobs and higher wages,” said McCain, who recently returned from a trip to Mexico and Colombia. “It keeps inflation under control. It makes goods more affordable for low-and middle-income consumers. Ninety-five percent of the world's consumers live outside the U.S. Our future prosperity depends on opening more of these markets, not closing them.”

Although Obama took no questions from the audience on Sunday, McCain, as he customarily does, did so yesterday.

Several members of the audience took the Republican to task for the position he adopted after the demise of the Kennedy-McCain bill that border enforcement should be strengthened before other immigration issues are addressed. Some said they were confused by his answers as to whether he intended to push for changes sequentially or all at once.

A convention attendee from Chicago, Juan Salgado, asked McCain if he intended to carry out his promised comprehensive immigration plans in a single piece of legislation.

McCain replied, “Yes, one single comprehensive bill, but first we have to assure the American people that the borders are secure. My friends, if you don't want to do that, then we don't pass the legislation.”

Afterward, Salgado, 39, said he was disappointed with the candidate's reply.

“I didn't get my answer,” said Salgado, executive director of the Instituto del Progreso Latino, a social-service organization in Chicago. “He's not going to give me my answer. He said one bill, but the enforcement has to come first, and that is not one bill.”

Salgado, whose organization provides education and employment training for immigrants and their families, said he is concerned about the way families are being separated by current enforcement policies.

“It's got to come together,” he said, referring to the components of McCain's promised immigration overhaul. “If it doesn't come together, it's going to be a mess.”

Other attendees interpreted McCain's statement differently.

“He didn't say 'and then maybe,' ” said Linda Mazon Gutierrez, 57, of Phoenix, referring to the candidate's promise to proceed with comprehensive changes after securing the borders.

“You can't do everything all at once,” added her friend Luz Sarmina, 57, also of Phoenix.

Both women said that while they are Democrats, they have long admired McCain for his stance on immigration. Both said yesterday that they were impressed to see the candidate take unscripted questions from the audience.

“We were very proud of the fact that he sponsored immigration reform,” said Mazon Gutierrez, president and CEO of the Hispanic Women's Corporation. “He did stand up for it, and put his money where his mouth is . . . You've got to give him credit.”