I fully expected immigration and “immigration reform” to be one of the key issues of the 2008 presidential campaign.  The Republican candidate was going to emphasize policy proposals and use jingoistic euphemisms that told the white, black and Asian people, in coded language, that they’d better be afraid of Mexicans and that we should send as many of them as we can back to where they came from.  Regardless of who won the election, this would have caused a large number of obedient Republicans who otherwise might not have worried too much about Mexicans to see our latest wave of immigrants as a people to fear and hate.

But this didn’t happen.

For this, I must say–eh-hem–thank you, John McCain.