Illegal immigration as an issue clearly has a racial aspect to it, no matter how much others try to tease it out. Illegal immigration is not only on the downturn overall, it's effect on the economy and the health of the social safety net is at worst neutral, at best beneficial. It's effectively just not that major or high priority an issue among the many other things that our country should be worried about.

So when someone makes illegal immigration the center of their political agenda, when someone pins a lot of the ills of society on illegal immigrants, they expect us to pretend that there's no racial component to the issue's place in our public discourse? That there isn't an enormous amount of "white angst" about an increasingly minority majority country? That there isn't an element of frustration with the Democrats's wide support among minorities? But we can't talk about these things in a debate stage in front of everyone. We can't voice those specific concerns. Illegal immigration, though, now that's something that we can talk out loud about.