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Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney signs baseballs while campaigning in Concord, N.H., on Dec. 23, 2011.

Barack Obama's uncle should be shipped back to Africa.

So says Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and Mormon presidential hopeful vying for front-runner position in the Republican race for presidential nominee.

Rounding up and deporting illegal aliens – more than 15 million people, some of whom have toiled in America for decades paying taxes – is a rallying cry among right-wingers. Seeming to sound 'soft' on illegal aliens can savage a campaign, as both Texas Governor Rick Perry and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich discovered when they floated cautious plans that would have allowed law-abiding, long-resident, aliens a path to legalize their status.

Mr. Romney's hard-line view collided with the wayward branch of Mr. Obama's family on a right-wing radio talk show shortly before Christmas.

Onyango Obama has been in the news before. 'Omar,' as he is known, was arrested for driving while drunk last summer. When police asked who he wanted to call, the 67-year-old half brother to the President's long-dead Kenyan father said: "I think I will call the White House."

It turns out that Mr. Obama – the one nabbed inebriated behind the wheel – was in the United States despite a 1992 deportation order. Just how long he has been living illegally in America is unclear, but at the time of his arrest he was working in a Boston liquor store.

"Well, if the laws of the United States say he should be deported, and I presume they do, then of course we should follow those laws," Mr. Romney said when asked if the President's uncle should be sent back to his Kenyan birthplace. "The answer is 'yes.' "

Right-wing commentators and internet discussion boards fired up with the double delight of tough talk on immigration and a direct hit on Mr. Obama's extended family.

Mr. Romney needed some reminding about the case and the relationship to the man he wants to oust from the Oval Office. "Who is Uncle Omar?" he asked Howie Carr, the show's host. But Mr. Romney was quick to recover and his position on deportation was clear.

Mr. Obama – the President – pretty much ignores the distant relatives on the Kenyan side of his family, although his critics and adversaries delight in dragging them into the political fray to embarrass the president. Mr. Obama, on holiday in Hawaii where he spent his youth after his mother remarried an Indonesian, has declined comment about his African uncle's messy immigration status.

Similarly, he tried to avoid a 2008 brouhaha over "Auntie Zeituni," the half-sister of his Kenyan father whose bid for political asylum in the United States was initially denied but remains living in America.

"This is the kind of red meat Republican primary voters want," said Mr. Carr, in a column for the Boston Herald. "The reason Gov. Rick Perry dropped like a stone in the polls last fall wasn't so much that he had that brain freeze in the debate, it was that he described Americans who are concerned about the free rides for illegal's as 'heartless.' "

Much of that antipathy is directed at Hispanics, by far the largest group of illegal aliens.

Calling for roundups and mass deportations may pay dividends among some Republican voters in key primaries, but it also carries risks for the general election. Hispanics are America's fastest growing minority and in many extended families include citizen voters as well as those would could be targeted in many of the more extreme Republican plans for mass forced deportations.

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