To say that we are having a interesting dialogue in this country about immigration is an understatement. It's more like a shouting match, a mud fight, a contact sport that leaves you bruised and exhausted.

It doesn't have to be that way. Unfortunately, the issue is so emotional that sometimes it's difficult to reason with people.

Take for instance, the young students at the University of North Carolina who protested the presence of Tom Tancredo on Tuesday and managed to cancel the event after somebody broke a window. News accounts say the protesters got rowdy, so Tancredo had to be scurried out and the campus police had to shut down the event. There seems to be some controversy about what really happened, as some students say they were protesting peacefully and were provoked by the police. Unless the students were filming, we might never know what happened.

I'm no fan of Tom Tancredo. In the last few years he has become the poster boy of what's wrong with the anti-immigrant movement; His nativism, his xenophobia, and his raw crudeness represented all that pro-immigrant activists hated about a movement that felt like a personal attack. Some of Tancredo's claims are so outrageous that don't even dignify a mention on my page (like saying Miami is a Thirld Word Country. How 20th Century.) 

But that doesn't mean Tancredo's opinions should not be heard. Tancredo, just like every person in the pro-immigrant rights movement, deserves to be heard. His opinions should be taken into consideration and with a grain of salt.

Unfortunately, it's easy to get caught up in the emotions of the debate, and sometimes, these emotions paint our interpretations of the facts. Do immigrants contribute or are they detrimental to the economy? Research shows they contribute, but the anti-immigrant lobby will tell you otherwise. They are confusing opinion with facts.

And when faced with defending opinions, especially when they are dramatically divergent, people can get emotional, sometimes downright nasty. In an effort to soften the blows, the National Council of La Raza launched "We can stop the hate." The initiative is tasked with reframing the issue and trying to advance a more nuanced dialogue, although the site seems more preoccupied with discrediting the "enemy," so to speak. I'm not sure it's working yet, but we have to give them credit for trying. 

I myself fell into the name calling trap and I'm a bit embarrassed by that. In one of my previous columns, I described celebrity conservative blogger Michelle Malkin in very unflattering terms. I guess I confused name calling with snappy writing. That was like, so not nice. Seriously, I'm a bit ashamed to even bring it up, but hey, we all do stupid things once in a while, right? I promise never to do it again.

One of the greatest ideals about this country is its cherished freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom for just about everything. But this freedom does not mean we should insult everyone. It means we can freely and openly express our opinions without fear of retribution. It means we can assemble and march and demand changes to our laws and our institutions. It means we should not be afraid the police will shut us down.

Immigrants, perhaps more than anyone, should know that. That's why I'm not sure those students in North Carolina were the first ones to disrupt Tancredo's speech. But that's just my opinion.