U.S. House Rep. John Spratt and challenger Ralph Norman renewed their battle over immigration Thursday in a televised debate sponsored by The State newspaper and ETV.

Border security was among the most heated topics of an hourlong broadcast, with Norman accusing Spratt of failing to address a problem that has grown into a national crisis.

“I’m tired of children going to our schools that can’t speak English,” Norman said. “... It’s not right for the American people to have to bear that burden.”

Norman, a real estate developer from Rock Hill, has drawn criticism after saying he does not require contractors at his job sites to check the status of their migrant laborers. Three contractors’ employees at sites Norman is developing acknowledged they are in the country illegally.

A Spratt ad that began airing two weeks ago labels Norman a hypocrite and says his company has been cited for violations, a claim Norman denied Thursday. He said the citation didn’t involve illegal immigrants.

“Keep running it because it’s helping us out,” Norman, a first-term state legislator, told Spratt. “People are livid over you taking the liberty to do something that’s not true.”

Spratt, a York Democrat seeking his 13th term, said he plans to pull the ad soon to switch to a different topic, but not because it is inaccurate. He blamed the Republican-led White House and Congress for failing to fix the immigration problem.

On the topic of taxes and spending, Norman, who is wrapping up his one term in the S.C. House, said he is a “true fiscal conservative” and called Spratt a liberal who votes to raise taxes.

Spratt offered his work in helping write the balanced budget agreement of 1997 as an example of his conservative values and said Congress needs to return to passing balanced budgets.

“We have not seen a fiscal performance this poor since the Great Depression,” said Spratt, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee and critic of the rising national debt.

The two have debated four times, but Thursday’s exchange aired in all 14 counties of South Carolina’s largest geographic district.

The occasion was especially important for Norman, whose campaign will have less TV time after the National Republican Congressional Committee canceled three weeks of advertising in the Charlotte market. Matt Garfield is a reporter for the Rock Hill Herald, a McClatchy newspaper. The Associated Press contributed.