Some issues are different. This illegal alien thing is (I believe) a very big deal for a lot of people. You can sense it in the tone of the posts. Fer instance, there is a lot less rote name calling and cliches used in the posts. Folks are very emotional about it.
durasell, you see what you want to see; what you don't see is how many people are NOT posting simply because they're sick and tired of every single news story being turned into a discussion of illegal aliens.
People avoid those threads like the plague; but, not to be ignored, they drag it on every thread.
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if somebody posted a thread saying "Today was a great day," and the next post would be "Yeah, but how many illegals got in today?"