Immigration is a hot topic among Latino Americans, but is the debate taking focus away from other important issues?

Recently, Angelo Falcón, National Institute for Latino Policy president, argued that today's heavy emphasis on immigration distracts the nation from other imperative topics.

"Although immigration reform affects about 15 percent of the total Latino population, as a public policy issue it now occupies almost all the Latino policy agenda, sucking up, as one colleague recently put it, all the oxygen on Latino issues," he wrote, according to NBC News.

Indeed, most Latinos in America are not undocumented immigrants. In 2012, the Pew Research Hispanic Trends Project estimated that there are 11.7 million undocumented immigrants in the country. This is a small number compared to the 53 million Latinos that live in the United States, according to a 2013 Census Bureau report.

In fact, immigration may not even be the biggest concern of Latino Americans. In 2013, Pew Research Hispanic Trends Project released data saying that only 32 percent of the population said immigration is "an extremely important issue facing the country today." The issues of education, jobs and the economy, healthcare, and federal debt received higher precedence with 54, 47, 41 and 38 percent declaring the issue "extremely important," respectively.

"We need to strike a better balance," Falcón continued. "[Immigration] is stifling the Latino agenda for the 21st century. We have to get to the point where we can walk and chew gum at the same time, and focus on other things like discrimination, education, and the infrastructures in our communities."

In addition, some argue that immigration butts its way into other discussions when it shouldn't.

"When we are talking about health care or voting rights, there are those who keep inserting immigration into the mix, whether it pertains to a particular issue or not — and normally in a detrimental way," Clarissa Martinez De Castro, who works for the National Council of La Raza, the United States' largest Latino advocacy and civil rights group, told NBC News.

"It is not a question of either/or," Falcón continued. "We should not only think about assimilating — but also about how the culture will accommodate us."
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Follow Scharon Harding on Twitter:@ScharHar.

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