This election season, a key issue in tight races across the country is immigration. With November fast approaching, candidates have utilized this emotionally charged topic to appeal to their base at a time when voter confusion about what the parties stand for seems endemic. At the heart of the wrangle is not only control of the legislature but also the waking giant that is the country’s Latino population, the single-fastest-growing demographic in the political landscape.

Here’s relevant background on some of the key players in the immigration debate.

President George W. Bush
The pros and cons of immigration have been argued in some form or another for decades, but the current incarnation of this debate began in early 2004 when Bush asked Congress to draft legislation to overhaul the country’s immigration policy and institute a guest-worker program. Unfortunately for Bush, his conservative colleagues in Congress were less than receptive to this idea, and thus began the first of several rifts on the issue between the executive and legislature. Recently, in effort to appease the hardliners and give Republicans something to stump about on the campaign trail, Bush signed into law a bill authorizing construction of 700 miles of border fencing. No funds were allocated for the multi-billion dollar boondoggle, however, and it is likely to never be built. This straw-man legislation was aimed only at giving voters the impression that both the administration and the Congress are working together to bring the border under control.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX)
No stranger to the immigration wrangle, Jackson Lee stepped into the thick of it back in 2000 by advocating the return of Elian Gonzalez to his father in Cuba. Calling Immigration the “civil rights issue of our time,” she answered Bush’s call for reform with the “Save America Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2005.” The bill increased visa availability and made it easier for illegal aliens to normalize their status. Today, it languishes in committee, the Guantanamo of legislative rest stops, a place from which few bills re-emerge for vote.

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI)
Named #2 on Rolling Stone’s list of the ten worst Congressmen, Sensenbrenner is a conservative demagogue on the ultra right of the political spectrum. If there was a bombshell dropped in the immigration debate it was H.R. 4437, known as “The Sensenbrenner Bill.” Among its most controversial provisions, the bill criminalized undocumented workers and made it a felony to provide aid to illegal aliens. The bill set the bar on the matter for conservatives and made the president’s position look soft by comparison. The bill passed with a vote that fell along party lines. H.R. 4437 provoked massive protests from pro-immigration activists, including the Catholic Church. Millions took to the streets across the nation to decry the bill as racist and anti-immigrant.

Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO)
Author of an amendment to 4437 that restricted federal grant money to any government agency maintaining a “sanctuary policy” for illegal aliens, Tancredo has been on the anti-immigration forefront since 1999, when he founded the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, a group dedicated to strengthening immigration laws. As chairman of that body, he has openly criticized the Bush administration, leading Karl Rove to label him a “traitor to his party.” This year Tancredo published In Mortal Danger, a book in which he warns of a secret invasion by Latino street gangs into American culture and government, and contends that immigration is the foremost threat to the future of America, which he terms the “one last best hope of mankind.”

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) and Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH)
Raising their sails into the gusting immigration debate, Hastert and Boehner called for congressional hearings to take place in twelve states over the summer of 2006. Mostly viewed as a photo op, the hearings produced little of substance. A headline-grabbing report based on the findings was issued recently by Rep. Mike McCaul (R-TX), who parroted the Tancredo assertion that drug gangs allied with international terrorist organizations represent the gravest threat to national security.

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)
Facing waning support for his Senate bid, Santorum elbowed his way into the debate by making immigration the cornerstone issue of his re-election campaign, a strange move considering he’s running for reelection in Pennsylvania, a state thousands of miles from the southern border, the most recent focus of his energies. Santorum launched attack ads aimed at his opponent’s liberal stance on immigration. The Spanish translation on Santorum’s website, however, omitted much of the strong rhetoric aimed at immigrants that appeared in the English version. As bald a strategy as it may be, Santorum has erased a double-digit deficit in the polls and looks strong coming into November.

Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)
Not all debate on the issue has been strictly partisan. An unlikely pairing of a liberal, blue-blooded New Englander with a conservative Vietnam vet from the Southwest produced perhaps the most reasonable piece of legislation on immigration to date. “The Secure America and Orderly Immigration” act of 2005 contained a guest-worker provision, a path to citizenship, increased border enforcement excluding a fence, and increased visas for family members. Although the bill may have strengthened McCain’s centrist credentials as a 2008 presidential hopeful, its proximity to tight midterm contests left little room for lawmakers to compromise and the bill was (what else?) referred to committee.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA)
Sensing public frustration with congressional inaction, Specter managed to rally enough majority support (22 of 55) to pass “the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act,” a compromise bill that included a controversial “path to citizenship” provision that hardline conservatives have labeled “amnesty.” Tom Tancredo called the bill, “the largest illegal alien amnesty in American history,” and House Republicans vowed to kill the bill.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
Coming off the disastrous repudiation of his conservative agenda in the special election of 2005, Arnold found himself in hot water over immigration when it was revealed that he had once supported California’s infamous Prop. 187, which would have denied services to illegal immigrants. An immigrant himself, this seemed a hypocritical stance to many immigration supporters and criticism led Arnold to immediately back pedal, calling his previous views “probably a mistake.” This new tack, however, angered members of California’s considerable conservative base who thought they had elected a party-line Republican. For a moment, Arnold’s political future seemed in question. In May, however, when Bush requested the Governator deploy national guard troops to the border, Arnold refused, emphasizing that border control was a federal responsibility, and pro-immigrant factions applauded. Then after a seventeen day standoff with Washington, Arnold agreed to deploy troops after all, but only half the number requested and at federal expense. In a photo op, he took credit for the troop presence, thus appeasing the more conservative of his constituents. Election looming, Arnold seems assured of victory.

The Minuteman Project
An authentic grassroots phenomenon, the Minutemen started as a ragtag bunch of citizens dismissed by many as ultra fringe “racists” and “vigilantes.” Yet the group has captured the imagination of America and become a real populist movement, garnering hundreds of volunteers and millions of dollars in donations. Overnight success led to a clash of egos between co-founders Jim Gilchrist and Chris Simcox. The two split acrimoniously and formed separate patrol groups, which then bashed each other in the press. Gilchrist publicly wondered what happened to all the money Simcox collected to build an Israeli-style border fence, and Simcox labeled his rival’s border watch project in Laredo as “suicidal,” and warned that Gilchrist would “lead his band of volunteers to the slaughter.” Despite the infighting, hundreds of volunteers continue to donate time and money to the group, and the border watch continues.

Mexico
Mexico receives about $12 billion every year from its citizens working in the U.S. Remittances are the nation’s second-largest source of income behind oil, and the economy depends upon them. To keep the money flowing south, Mexican President Vicente Fox has lobbied aggressively for a guest-worker program and has called the proposed border fence “shameful.” Immigration enforcement agreements between the U.S. and Mexico have been limited to securing Mexico’s border with Central America. The prospect of jobs in the U.S. is tantalizing to a population of which 40 percent live in poverty. U.S. jobs are also incidentally the three-hundred pound gorilla of Mexican national life, the distraction that allows the government to ignore long-standing economic woes. Citizens who want to better themselves should go to the USA. The government has produced comic books on how to sneak into the U.S. as well as maps of the Southwest that include major U.S. roads and sources of water. Fox’s successor, Felipe Calderon, is sure to maintain the status quo by working hard to keep Washington favorable to an open border.

The Average Immigrant
Thousands of people stream into the U.S. every year looking for work. Mexicans pay as much as $3000 dollars for passage to the U.S. and the chance to make a better life. More than half are male and are on average about 21 years old. Undocumented workers represent about 5 percent of the U.S. work force and take jobs in a variety of industries, mostly in cleaning and maintenance occupations, food manufacturing and preparation, and construction.

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Greg Magnuson edits the blog BorderlandObserver and is currently working on his first novel, Hyperion Bridge, a mystery set in Los Angeles in the early 1950s.