Last night’s second Republican presidential candidate debate didn’t last as long as the Reagan’s first term, it only seemed like it. But, there were some educational nuggets involved. For instance, we were informed by Senator Marco Rubio that “America is not a climate” and that Jeb! actually inhaled marijuana in his youth.

We also couldn’t help happily noting that the large Republican field is quite diverse and on the whole much younger than the few candidates who are running as Democrats.

It’s a shame that the moderators and the candidates ignored the fact that even with millions of unemployed Americans, at more than a million a year, the United States naturalizes about a million job-seekers annually, the most of any other nation. And we import hundreds of thousands of “guest workers” — but do not effectively monitor their departure.

- D.A. King

Also noted was Senator Rand Paul’s very educated description of the legal background on 14th amendment and the current widely accepted myth that it automatically confers birthright citizenship on the children of illegal aliens. Americans paying attention with an open mind got some valuable and factual information.

As expected, immigration was a hot topic in the debate, but the focus was on the crime of illegal immigration. We learned from Jeb that he is of the opinion that if we deport illegal aliens – like Mexico does and virtually all other nations do – we would “send a bad message to the world.”

“Creating jobs” came up several times. I don’t remember American workers’ wages even being mentioned and the “jobs” points were never connected to the immigration topic — with the exception of the usual nonsense that Americans will not work in agriculture. That’s too bad. Maybe more Americans would have been reminded that the natural laws of supply and demand actually do apply to immigration too.

Yes, it’s true: The higher the numbers of workers in the labor market, the lower the wages for working Americans of every description.

And nobody responded to the alleged “agriculture worker shortage” with the fact that the Ag industry bosses run the only business in the nation with its own apparatus – the H2A visa – with which they can import an unlimited number of legal temporary foreign farm workers.

One of the best parts of the three hours was the commercial from the highly respected, Washington, DC-based NumbersUSA,which laid out the critical point on the lawful immigration issue — the numbers of legal immigrants the U.S. takes in every year.

It’s a shame that the moderators and the candidates ignored the fact that even with millions of unemployed Americans, at more than a million a year, the United States naturalizes about a million job-seekers annually, the most of any other nation. And we import hundreds of thousands of “guest workers” — but do not effectively monitor their departure.

A question that didn’t come up: “If you don’t support open borders, then how many new immigrants should the U.S. import each year? We’ll wait…”

Pre-campaign history has given us some insight into a few of the candidates’ positions on immigration numbers. As a Gang of Eight member, Marco Rubio wanted to double immigration in the failed Senate amnesty bill of 2013, while Cruz tried to increase the numbers of H1B tech workers brought to compete with Americans by 500 percent.

Jeb! said he wants to “fix the immigration system to make it an economic driver” — he has said he embraces the dream of importing more workers too. We thought the claim from Jeb!’s donors was that mass immigration is already the economic driver?

While there was the usual election-time cliché talk about “securing the border,” and attacks on Trump with the premise that it is somehow impossible to deport illegal aliens, what wasn’t offered as a solution to illegal immigration – and the employment woes of American workers – is the tried and proven successful concept of stepped up interior enforcement and continually reducing the population of illegal aliens by ending illegal employment and cutting off benefits and services.

Rather like noting that not many people will break into Disneyland or stay past closing if they are not allowed to ride the rides. Here we should note that Disneyland is more secure than America’s borders 14 years after 9/11.

Donald Trump, nearly single-handedly responsible for making immigration a focal point of the entire presidential campaign (thank you, Donald Trump), again put forth his flawed idea of deporting illegal aliens only to then reverse the process by returning the “good ones” to the U.S.

This “touchback” and return policy has been dreamed up before and should be examined more carefully by his supporters and by his campaign competition.

And here’s hoping there are no more three-hour candidate debates.

D.A. King is president of the Georgia-based Dustin Inman Society and is an independent voter. He describes himself a “pro-enforcement” on immigration and borders. Twitter:@DAKDIS