Worried Americans and possibly pandering politicans?

I was just listening to Ted Robbins' story on Morning Edition detailing how big an issue illegal immigration has become in John McCain's fight for a fifth term in the U.S. Senate.

Senator McCain once favored a path to citizenship for those in this country illegally. Running for re-election against an opponent well to his right, he has completely abandoned that idea in favor of supporting  Arizona's tough new immigration law. Appearing recently on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, Senator McCain claimed that illegal immigrants are intentionally causing car accidents.

The subject came up when he defended the tough new Arizona immigration bill against the possibility of racial profiling.

McCain told Bill O’Reilly that while he’d be “very sorry” if a Hispanic person suffered the indignity of racial profiling, the law would punish illegal wrongdoers.

“It's the people whose homes and property are being violated,” he said. “It's the drive-by that -- the drivers of cars with illegals in it that are intentionally causing accidents on the freeway."

Reading this, I couldn't help wondering if McCain really believes what he is saying, or if that's just what his people are telling him will get him re-elected?

Here in Virginia, Governor McDonnell sees illegal immigrants as such a threat to our safety in the Commonwealth that he wants to divert an unspecified number of State Troopers from their duties of "protecting and serving" Virginia citizens to, according to his website, "perform certain functions of a federal immigration officer within the borders of the Commonwealth." 

Thinking all this over made me decide to ask you a question: Has your life, or the life of someone you know, been disturbed, disrupted, diminished by an illegal immigrant?

Mine has not. Nor has the life of anyone I know. At least no one's told me it has.

Now an entirely different question. . .

Has your life or the life of someone you know been disrupted by the troubled economy -- that enormous, amorphous entity that all the best and the brightest cannot seem to restore to health?

Mine has. And, when I think about it, so have the lives of almost everyone I know.

Historically in economically and socially troubled times, a sizable chunk of Americans have, to our later shame, turned on our immigrants.

Another question.: Might we possibly be doing that again?