Voter's Survival Kit: Eight Things You Need to Know About Immigration

So whatever happened to immigration policy? It's been one of the nation's fiercest disputes for several years and a hot issue even during the primary season. Yet immigration never even came up during the presidential debates and even though the candidates may be shifting their positions, it isn't getting much media attention.

That's a shame, because it’s a topic many Americans feel passionate about – and it's not going away. The fact is that the last several attempts to fix the immigration laws haven't gone anywhere, but all the pressures and concerns about immigration are still there.

But one of the challenges in talking about immigration is that the debate usually brings more heat than light. So it helps to have a sense of the basic facts, which of course is what our Voter's Survival Kit is all about. For a complete rundown on the subject, including options for addressing the issue, have a look at our survival kit guide on "Immigration: Who Gets to Come, Who Gets to Stay."

In the meantime, here's eight key things you should know about immigration:

Six in 10 Americans believe that, in principle, immigration is a "good thing" for the country, but three-quarters (77 percent) worry that it may be too easy for illegal immigrants to come into the country.

The U.S. admits more than one million immigrants a year, and more than 12 percent of the U.S. population is foreign-born.

There are an estimated 11.7 million illegal or undocumented immigrants in the country. U.S. border agents say they apprehended over one million people in 2006.

Current laws emphasize family ties for admission, and most legal immigrants are, in fact, relatives of people already here.

Although legal immigration rates are historically high, they have fallen since the early 1990s.

More than half of immigrants settle in just four "gateway" states (California, Florida, New York and Texas). Increasingly, however, immigrants are moving to areas of the country with very little history of immigration.

More than half of illegal or undocumented immigrants come from Mexico and Central America.

Despite widespread dissatisfaction with the current immigration system, Congress was unable to pass compromise legislation in 2006, even though it had the support of leading Democrats and Republicans.

How do we know this? Here are our sources: U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Foreign-Born Population; U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Yearbook of Immigration Statistics; Public Agenda, People's Chief Concerns on Immigration