None of the candidates said anything especially unexpected about immigration in last night’s debate. Huntsman’s still for amnesty, Paul is still against E-Verify, and Gingrich is still floating his ridiculous idea of citizen boards that would decide who gets deported and who gets amnesty (that’ll work great in East L.A.! If they can find any citizens).

The real surprise was one of the questions, by Susan Ferrechio: “With the unemployment rate at 9.1 percent, do you still think we need to import more foreign labor?” I’m pretty sure that’s the first time a presidential candidate has ever been asked about the level of legal immigration, much less in connection to unemployment. And Romney actually intimated he’d be for cuts in legal immigration during a slowdown: “I’d have the number of visas that we give to people that come here legally determined in part by the needs of our employment community.” Now, I don’t believe for a minute that he’d actually cut immigration, and he did give the usual song and dance about needing to staple a green card to the diploma of Ph.D. recipients (which is a phony issue since, as an upcoming report by my colleague David North points out, the large majority of Ph.D. recipients already stay after they complete their degrees and we also admit some 200,000 skilled foreign workers into the country every year).

Nonetheless, more and better questioning on immigration than in previous presidential debates. Baby steps.