July 23, 2004
IMPORTED NATIVISTS:
Immigration isn't top Latino issue: Education, economy and Iraq are bigger worries, a poll finds (Michael Doyle, July 23, 2004, Sacramento Bee)
Schools trump immigration as an issue important to Latino voters, a politically provocative new survey shows.It's not just schools.
Latino voters consistently and emphatically placed immigration reform behind other priorities, including health care, the war in Iraq and crime, according to the nationwide survey. The snapshot of Latino opinion, in turn, carries political implications for both major parties' presidential campaigns.
"The surprise, or maybe it's not a surprise, is that immigration ranks last among issues that Latinos pick as an issue that will decide their vote," said Roberto Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic Center.
The nonpartisan center and the Kaiser Family Foundation prepared the in-depth survey of 2,228 Latino adults. It's part of an ongoing series of surveys conducted by the center, which is part of the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication.
They're already here--they oppose immigration just like the rest of us. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 23, 2004 5:55 PM
The popular perception is that no matter which party is in power, immigration policy is the same. Official multilingualism and multiculturalism; lax to nonexistent border enforcement, particularly in the southwest; no effort to enforce employer sanctions; no effort to promote assimilation; minimal efforts to streamline bureaucracy; net result, lots and lots of illegals from Mexico and a few from more sinister parts of the world.
Both parties have substantial constituencies for amnesty or greatly increased levels of immigration, whether legalized or not. On the GOP side, the business community supports cheaper labor and nobody's really very keen on the types of measures we'd need to take to enforce the existing laws comprehensively. (Immigration cops routinely showing up at your workplace and asking for papers proving your residence status? Not in America, not any time soon, at least not outside certain notoriously illegal-immigrant-friendly industries.) On the Democrat side, you've got the anointed Hispanic lobby and the limousine liberals (not letting brown people do whatever they want is racist, and the more antisocial it is, the more we have to favor it).
Posted by: Random Lawyer at July 23, 2004 6:14 PMIt's called firing for effect. Minorities see polls as an opportunity for activism in my opinion, otherwise who would listen to them. they're not stupid you know.
Posted by: genecis at July 23, 2004 7:18 PM