I agree that the immigration issue is an issue primarily for politicians, so they can talk about it instead of the Iraq war or health care or social security, since they certainly don't want to talk about any those issues, since they don't have a clue what to do about any of them.
But the way the immigration issue has become "popular" among the average American is by use of racism. What a crock of bs that it's "not a racial issue". The Southern Law and Poverty Center has documented that anti-immigration hate groups have sky-rocketed. They've also compiled a list of the most frequent immigration-hate "facts" stated by politicians, the media, and talk radio, which are primarily made up of misinformation, exaggerations, or outright lies.
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?sid=415
For example the racist CLAIM that "Undocumented immigrants are "stealing" American jobs", is refuted by SPLC:
FACTS: The 2006 Pew Hispanic Center study, "Growth in the Foreign-Born Workforce and Employment of the Native Born," found no evidence that the large increases in immigration since 1990 have led to higher unemployment among native Americans. The center examined census data on the increase in immigrants in each of the 50 states, comparing those figures to state jobless rates and participation in the labor force by the native born. Although immigrants tended to be younger and less educated than native workers, the report found "no apparent relationship between the growth of foreign workers with less education and the employment outcome of native workers with the same level of education." These findings were in line with those of most economists, who have failed to find a link between immigration and job loss. "The big message here," said University of California economist Giovanni Peri, who conducted a similar study in California, "is there is no job loss from immigration." --duh to the racists
How about the other racist CLAIM: "Immigrants are depressing the wages of native Americans."
SLPC has compiled FACTS: Despite what many view as the intuitively obvious relationship of immigration to wages, the fact is that most economists have not found a significant link between rising immigration and falling wages, the exception being studies in the early 1990s that showed a slight negative effect on African-American high school dropouts' pay. Overall, the National Academy of Sciences found in a broad look at the question in 1997, there was "only a weak relationship between native wages and the number of immigrants" in a given place. This was true for all types of native workers. The one group that did suffer were "immigrants from earlier waves, for whom the recent immigrants are close substitutes in the labor market." More recent studies have actually found a positive effect on native wages. The Public Policy Institute of California published a study this year that found that immigrants arriving in that state between 1990 and 2004 increased native-born workers' wages by 4%. The benefits, attributed to immigrants generally performing complementary rather than competitive work, extended to native workers at all educational levels.
Just like the Irish, Germans, Poles, Jews, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Laotion, and Cambodians have all been "welcomed" when they immigrated to our country, once again we open our arms to immigrants.
What happens if you dare stand up to the hatred disguised as "protecting American rights":
"One wanted to kick me in the uterus until I couldn't have children. Others have all kinds of really lewd and awful threats. ... [I]f the goal of these people was to scare me, it worked."
— Arizona Rep. KYRSTEN SINEMA (D-Phoenix), describing in the Jan. 30 issue of The Arizona Republic the rape and death threats she received after proposing a bill that would have outlawed armed civilian border patrol groups.
FYI: I lived in Arizona in the 1980's and was shocked at the level of hatred openly displayed towards anyone of Latino descent (legal immigrant or not). A white, male, upper-middle class co-worker "explained" Arizona pecking order to me soon after I moved there: "Whites run the show, blacks aren't that bad or asians, but
Mexicans are scum. Native Americans stay on their reservations. " I was so shocked I had no idea what to say. I was speechless. I couldn't stand to be around this man again. Needless to say, I didn't live there long. I live in NC, here everyone is treated like scum, except the white and wealthy.