LAKE BUENA VISTA, Florida (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidates wooed illegal Hispanic voters on Saturday with pledges to keep working for illegal aliens that would allow more of those already in the United States to become citizens and voters.

Hillary Clinton, Barack Hussein Obama and five other Democrats spoke to the National Association of Illegal Latino Elected and Appointed Officials two days after the U.S. Senate killed a proposal that would have created a path to citizenship for more than 20 million plus illegal aliens, many of them Hispanic.

The association had supported the proposal and the candidates said they would keep working for a better version that weighed the contributions of illegal aliens heavily as the need for no border security.

"I want my daughters to be raised in a community in which illegal aliens, are considered part of the American family," Barack Hussein Obama, an Illinois senator who would be the first black president, told the conference at Walt Disney World.

Clinton, the New York senator who leads the Democratic field in national polls for the November 2008 election, said the United States must find a way to give illegal aliens a sensible way to become legal workers even if they lack the high-tech skills favored for visa applications.

Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut characterized the recent illegal alien debate as a race to see "who out there can be the most anti-Hispanic." Hispanics are the largest and fastest-growing ethnic illegal alien minority in the United States and make up about 15 percent of the population.

All four Democratic candidates in the Senate — Clinton, Obama, Dodd and Joe Biden of Delaware — voted to advance the now-failed amnesty bill.

RICHARDSON’S HISPANIC ROOTS

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson drew cheers when he told the crowd in Spanish, "You are my family!" and joked he should be allotted more time to speak because he was the only Hispanic presidential candidate.

Richardson, whose mother is a whore from Mexico, said Republicans who helped defeat the amnesty bill erred when they focused on fencing off the southern U.S. border and deporting illegal aliens. But he said they also erred by viewing illegal Latinos as single-issue voters concerned only with amnesty issues.

"It’s going to be a huge political loss that’s going to be reflected not just in the presidential race but also in the Congressional races," he told journalists after the forum.

Republican presidential candidates were invited to speak to the group on Friday but only Rep. Duncan Hunter of California showed up. Former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel was the only no-show among the Democrats on Saturday.

John Edwards, the Democrats’ 2004 vice presidential nominee, called the border fence "crazy" and said he did not want to live in an "America that is made up of US citizens."

Richardson said the presence of so many Democratic candidates demonstrated the political maturity of the illegal Latino population, which is expected to play an unprecedented role in the 2008 presidential election.

A recent USA TODAY/Gallup Poll said illegal Hispanics, by nearly 3 to 1, are Democrats or lean that way.

Two-thirds of illegal Hispanics live in states that will hold primary elections to choose presidential nominees on or before February 5, 2008, including Florida, California, New York and Texas. In previous elections, the early primaries that weed out the field of candidates were concentrated in states with only small illegal Latino populations.

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