More than 20 people were arrested in Seaside, Salinas and Watsonville last month by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. The arrests came about one week after an immigration raid at a kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa– the largest in U.S. history– where almost 400 people were picked up.

Locally, those taken into custody were “targeted,” officials said, people who had violated deportation orders. In Iowa, the arrests were the result of a criminal investigation into whether the employer knowingly was hiring illegal immigrants.

While the raids made fleeting headlines, both incidents got me to thinking about all sides of the illegal immigration issue and that significant debate has been missing this year in the halls of Congress and, notably, on the presidential campaign trail.

The fact is, U.S. immigration policy is a mess, and it’s time lawmakers seriously addressed comprehensive reform that holds undocumented workers and employers to account, provides a way for people to come here legally, offers options for those already here illegally to come out of the shadows, protects their rights in the workplace, and keeps our borders secure.

Congress failed to pass comprehensive immigration reform last year, a bipartisan measure that would have provided legal status and a path to citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Since then, it seems politicians have given up trying to solve the problem. Clearly they are afraid during an election year to take a stand on such a divisive issue, essentially relegating it to the back burner… on a camp stove in the middle of the wilderness.

Indeed, presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain, a co-sponsor of last year’s bill, now says border security is the most important aspect of illegal immigration. And he has declined to say whether he now would even vote for his own bill.

Barack Obama’s campaign website lists key points in the immigration debate– securing the borders, removing incentives to enter this country illegally, promoting economic development in Mexico– but the presumptive Democratic nominee rarely talks about the issue on the campaign trail. His website has a quote on immigration that is more than a year old.

Last year’s effort was the closest this country has come to reform since the late summer of 2001. At that time, President Bush and then-Mexican President Vicente Fox were inches from an immigration accord. But the issue went off track after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and never really has gotten back on.

To be sure, in the past few years a beefed-up Border Patrol has caught more people. The Minutemen civilian militia and more stringent laws governing employers in Arizona have deterred some would-be immigrants. And fences and barriers along various points of the 1,950-mile border with Mexico have discouraged others.

But none of those efforts has stopped hundreds of thousands of immigrants from crossing the border illegally every year. Many of these immigrants take jobs that Americans won’t; in Monterey County that largely means in the fields.

Yes, the Mexican government should work harder to provide a solid economy so its residents don’t head north for better opportunities. And perhaps the United States should consider a kind of Marshall Plan for Mexico, doing much like it did after World War II when it sent billions to countries affected by the war to help them get back on their economic feet.

But it is impractical– and probably economic suicide– to force illegal immigrants back home. We don’t need another “Operation Wetback,” where in the 1950s tens of thousands of Mexican nationals were deported and hundreds of thousands more fled out of fear of being caught. And we don’t need another amnesty for undocumented immigrants like we had in 1986.

Cesar Lara, executive director of the Monterey Bay Central Labor Council, knows the stakes are high.

“In some ag industries, it’s 50 percent undocumented workers who are working in the fields,” he says. “If people were serious about doing a roundup type of system… it would devastate the ag industry and definitely devastate the Central Coast ag industry.”

But Lara also is pragmatic, saying he believes the presidential candidates have chosen not to talk about immigration on the campaign trail because there is no political will right now for reform and they’d have to expend too much political capital to force the issue.

He knows, too, that immigration reform won’t be the top issue on the next president’s to-do list, but says it should be on the short list.

“Everybody says the immigration system is broken,” Lara says. “The issue has been avoided too long. For the country to move forward, it has to be addressed.”

Lara is right.

It’s way past time that we overhaul the system. Ignoring the problem has not made it go away.