What Immigration Issue?

Remember how issues surrounding immigration, whether about driver's licenses or state border fences or xenophobic mass deportation plans, were all the rage during the primary election season? And, remember how political pundits fell over themselves to declare the immigration issue the probable hot topic for the general election season?

Yeeeahhh, not quite.

The immigration issue didn't come up once in any of the general election debates, the candidates haven't raised the issue in any remotely significant way over the past five months, and the media hasn't reported on any major aspect of the issue just the same. Not only has the immigration issue not been a major issue of this general election season, it quite possibly has been the least mentioned issue of any of the tradition election issue topics.

Why, you ask? Here's a few contributing reasons, by my estimation: first, particularly over the past two months, the economy has trumped everything; second, there haven't been any major immigration-related issues recently (there just haven't been any "dangerous" Mexican immigrant-related incidences for Lou Dobbs and Bill O'Reilly to foam at the mouth over); third, the entire stock of "divisive cultural issues" has plummeted this campaign season, with all the hope and positive messages coming from the Obama campaign, forcing other campaigns (read: Hillary, McCain) to take heat for going overtly negative.

To a lesser degree, most of this can also be said about the Iraq War issue, however I think much of the silence pertaining to the war issue has a great deal to do with a country that has largely decided where they stand on that issue: they want out ASAP.
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