HispanicBusiness

Tom Tancredo, a former GOP congressman and a controversial firebrand on illegal immigration, told a cheering crowd of Tea Partiers this week that he's glad GOP Senator John McCain didn't get elected president, in part because he already would have achieved immigration reform by now.

"Thank God John McCain lost the election," the former congressman from Colorado told a cheering crowd of 600 at a Tea Party convention in Tennessee, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Tancredo blasted McCain of Arizona for his alliance with Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a Democrat from Illinois, who previously tried without success to co-author a bill that would have provided a path to citizenship for many illegal immigrants living in the United States.

He also said President Obama has energized the opposition in a way that McCain never could have.

"We would not be here," he said. "What happened to us in that last election was really a revolution."