Immigration: What the U.S. Does Right

The nation recently received two contradictory signals about the importance of immigration reform. President Obama stood near the Mexican border in El Paso on May 10 and called (again) for immigration reform. The next week, Gallup released a poll showing that a scant 4% of Americans consider immigration to be the nation's most important problem. That's down from 11% four years ago.What's happened to our national immigration angst? Clearly, the economic slump that began in late 2007 has given us other things to worry about. The long recession and slow recovery have had more direct effects on our perception of immigration problems too.