Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney may be in the lead in the Palmetto state, but that doesn’t mean South Carolinians necessarily like him.

During a Fox News debate at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center on Monday, the Republican audience booed loudly after being told that Romney’s father was born in Mexico.

In a report last week, NBC revealed that Romney’s great grandfather, Miles Park Romney, had fled to Mexico with other Mormons to escape persecution for polygamy. Romney’s father, George, was later born in the northern Mexico colony of Colonia Dublan.

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At the age of five, George Romney returned to the United States illegally after the Mexican Revolution broke out.

“With regards to immigration policy, that those that come here illegally should not be given favoritism or a special route to becoming residents or citizens that’s not given to those people that stayed in line legally,” the candidate told debate moderator Juan Williams. “I think we have to follow the law and insist that those that have come here illegally ultimately return home, apply, get in line with everyone else.”

The audience later booed again when Williams asked if former House Speaker Newt Gingrich had “belittled the poor and racial minorities” by declaring that black Americans should demand jobs, not foodstamps.

Audiences at other GOP debates have booed a gay soldier, cheered the death penalty and cheered child labor.

Watch this video from Fox News, broadcast Jan. 16, 2012.

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