Is immigration the next wedge issue that the Republicans will use to successfully pummel us into oblivion? E. J. Dionne thinks so and he's transmitted his anxiety to my husband.
This morning my husband handed me the WaPo, turned to Dionne's column. (Please forgive him, he can't help it that he's a 20th century man who still gets his news from actual newspapers.)
"You've got to read this," he said. "The Republicans couldn't get traction on the gay marriage issue, but they're going to bury us with the immigration issue."
He then paraphrased the following lines from Dionne's column:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
One poll finding this week that shook Democrats came in a survey conducted by Democracy Corps, a consortium organized by party consultants Stan Greenberg, Al Quinlan and James Carville. It asked voters to pick two from a list of seven problems that explain "why the country is going in the wrong direction."
The survey found that among independent voters, 40 percent -- by far the largest group -- picked this option: "Our borders have been left unprotected and illegal immigration is growing."
Pretty scary stuff, right? If 40% of independents buy into the "we're being invaded by raping, thieving, murdering furriners and they're not even legal!" crap, the Democrats are indeed in trouble.
But my background is survey research, so my little check-the-methodology antennae went up.
Dionne reported the poll result correctly. It's right there in his quote. But he didn't realize what he had. Here's the issue that 40% of independents were concerned about: "our borders having been left unprotected and illegal immigration growing."
Now parse this out -- this statement contains two issues, and only one of them is immigration. The other issue is unprotected borders.
In fact, if I were one of the respondents and had been asked to rate this item on level of importance, (and I'm a big supporter of immigrant rights) I would be sort of stuck, because I do indeed think that Bush has done a crappy job of protecting our borders. I'm terribly worried about our ports and the huge numbers of ships and cargo that pass in and out without any real examination. And I'm furious that we don't even control our own ports. There is an issue of border protection, and I think it is of great importance and could spell disaster for the United States. And it's something that clearly can be blamed on the current White House.
So, I would have to say that I don't think our borders are safe. But that's not because of incoming folks from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, etc., people who really just want to work hard and improve the lot of their families.
My guess is that illegal immigration is of great concern to many independents. But I wonder if it's truly 40%. And of the people who see illegal immigration as a major concern, I wonder what, specifically, they are most worried about. I think we need to address specific concerns, e.g., lowered wages because of immigrants' willingness to accept them; or the cost of providing services to immigrants (they're actually very cheap because so many of them are afraid to come forward and ask for anything, but most of them still pay taxes -- in fact, they're a bargain!); or job loss because of the availability of cheaper labor. If we can focus in on the things about immigration that worry people, we might avoid the possibility of it being used as a way to scare people into voting Republican.