Very few people care much about illegal immigration, when it comes right down to it.
But it is one of those issues that is easy to get people whipped up into a frenzy about pretty easily. You can frame it such that it hits quite a few buttons, from “You will lose your job!!!” to “those people talk funny!!!” All it takes is a few ads and suddenly people who before were quietly minding their own business are foaming at the mouths about how the Mexicans are destroying America.
It doesn’t hold up to too close of examination, though. In the end, most people recognize that their Latino neighbors hold values that are probably even more “American” than their own family.
The Republicans have been using illegal immigration as a tactic to get people out to the polls for quite a few election cycles. This time around they decided to do something different, I guess.
Part of the problem is that people have a great deal of cognitive dissonance when it comes to immigration, both legal and illegal. The same person who is firmly against immigrants making use of public services might very well want to hire them for cash. The feelings around H1Bs are murky and conflicted as well. There is a lot of room for nuance, and a lot of people touched very personally who are in no mood for any nuance. In many ways, it is a minefield.
So, you can’t tell either, right?
Anyway, the correct answer has already been hinted at above: it was a big deal for a while *because *Congress was gearing up to address it and everyone disagreed about how to do so. Once that was done, it went back to being a secondary issue.
IIRC (you like that hedge Brainy G ?), most of the politicians agreed on what to do, and were close to voting … and then the voters found out and all hell broke loose.
In this election, at any rate, such media bias as there is favors McCain, not Obama. In broader terms, this is the sort of thing for which no cite is required because the very terms are matters of opinion and you can define the mainstream media as “liberal” simply by setting the goalposts on the left edge of Fox.
But when you assert that McCain is to the left of the majority of the American people, relatively and positionally, then a cite is appropriate because you are making a definitely verifiable/falsifiable assertion. And a false one. The American political center-of-gravity today is a lot further to the left than you appear to recognize, and inching further leftward slowly but steadily. See here, and this thread and links therein.
You’re equating voting preferences to coverage, which is a shell game. Not that anybody can ever agree on what media bias is, means, or how to measure it…
Well, obviously at least as far as the debates are concerned, this says more about the hosts of the debates than the candidates. But in general, the public and media only have enough mental space for one or two hot button issues at a time, and they ebb and flow to and from the forefront of our consciousness. Immigration was at the forefront for awhile, but has taken a backseat lately. The war is probably a big issue because the candidates have made it a big point of contention, whereas the economy is at the forefront because of the housing scandal.
Well, Obama talked about immigration yesterday in New Mexico: He blasted McCain for reversing himself on the immigration-reform legislation he used to support. For his own part, he promised to control the borders, to crack down on employers who hire illegals, and to put those illegals now here on a track to citizenship.