Pew surveyed Latino voters on illegal immigration issues: the report isn’t available yet at the site, but this article reports that Latino attitudes towards illegal immigration has taken a seriously negative turn. The most important finding? 31% consider illegal immigration a net negative for the Latino community, with 29% considering it positive, and 20% considering it neither. In 2007, 50% considered illegal immigration to be a net positive.
Oddly, I sort of agree with both sets of spin from the article on why this would be so: the right’s argument that this reflects heightened public awareness on the issue makes a good deal of sense. After all, people are more than a set of survey questions: having a last name like Herrera or Sandoval or Martinez does not automatically require you to take a hardcore liberal line on immigration policy. But this means that I also sort of take the left’s argument that much of this new attitude comes from our miserable economy. Indeed, it does: the economy’s bad, thanks largely to the inability of the Democratic party to focus on job creation. Instead, they do things like waste valuable legislative time pandering to the ultra-far left splinter of the Latino community…
Via Mickey Kaus (who is watching in horror as his Democratic party acts like, well, the Democratic party on the DREAM Act*), via Instapundit.
Moe Lane
*:shrug: Elections have consequences.
Huh … Just stealing the jobs Americans used to have. Now includes Latinos. Never thought I would hear that, but unemployment clears the head.
Illegal immigration was ALWAYS bad news for the Hispanic community. Look, Jose Trabajero ain’t crawling under the fence to steal my job. But when Latino kids go looking for that first important crappy job, that gets them into the employment system and teaches them what working for a living means, guess who’s sitting right there? And he ain’t going nowhere.
The most vociderous anti-indocumentado activist I ever met was a Latino woman whose kids couldn’t find work, and that was long before the current recession.