In this year’s presidential election, the theme has taken a back seat. Although John McCain and Barack Obama have mentioned immigration on visits to south Florida (where Cuban immigrants are highly concentrated) and a few other states with high immigrant populations, it has been a low priority issue for both candidates.

Just a year ago, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s proposal to let undocumented workers apply for driver’s licenses was divisive and ignited a ferocious debate. Hillary Clinton was criticized for supporting it and Obama’s willingness to back it apparently left the door open for a furious and damaging counter-attack by the Republican Party.

With Hispanics constituting a sizeable share of the electorate in four of the six states that President Bush carried by margins of five percentage points or less in 2004, immigration looked set to take center stage in the election.

Then McCain got the Republican nomination. As Patrick Young, lawyer for the American Centre of Refugees, said: “Essentially you had the two most pro-immigrant candidates win their parties nominations.”

Whether it was the economic crisis or the fact that both candidates views on immigration aren’t too far apart, the ticking immigration bomb has been left on the backburner.

But the bomb is set to explode sooner or later, as  contrasting blogs on reputable, broadsheet U.S. newspapers confirm.

“Illegal immigration is breaking the backs of Americans and the American economy. We’re doomed,” said one blogger in the Washington Post.

“Why don’t all the white folk go back to Europe? They’re the real illegals! Give this land back to the brown race!” ranted an angry Latino on the L.A. Times forum.

Hand-in-hand with a relative lack of attention on immigration issues has come the decreased focus on U.S.-Mexican relations, despite the variety of heavy issues that the next president will have to deal with in his first term: the drug war, NAFTA, energy and, of course, immigration.

“Many Mexicans worry that their country has taken a back seat to Iraq and the U.S. economy during the campaign,” said Raul Benitez, professor at the North American Studies Center at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “There is a perception that McCain and Obama don’t have any kind of policy towards Latin America.”

There’s little specific about Mexico on Obama’s website. “We have to improve our relationship with Mexico and work with the Mexican government so that their economy is producing jobs on that side of the border,” he says. “Bush dropped the ball. He has been so obsessed with Iraq that we have not seen the kinds of outreach and cooperative work that would ensure that the Mexican economy is working not just for the very wealthy in Mexico, but for all people.”

Obama’s criticism of NAFTA during the primaries, espeically in working-class areas of Ohio, did not go down well in Mexico, while McCain, on the other hand, visited President Felipe Calderon in July to discuss immigration, drugs trafficking and trade issues. The Republican candidate is gung-ho on trade agreements, although he did vote not to allow Mexican trucks to operate in the Unted States. Generally speaking, Mexican governments have found it easier to deal with Republican presidents. Calderon has not endorsed a candidate but private speculation suggests he favors McCain.