Immigration poll

It turns out that most people in the United States don't want to jump on the "hate the immigrant" bandwagon. Perhaps the most interesting findings were that, surprise, African Americans were more welcoming to undocumented people than whites.

A new poll from CNN found that:

Most Americans would like there to be fewer illegal immigrants in the country, but only three in 10 say all of them should be deported ...

Blacks and whites differed over whether the number of illegal immigrants should be increased, with 14 percent of African-Americans saying it should, versus 3 percent of whites.

Nineteen percent of blacks said they thought all illegal immigrants should be removed from the country; 35 percent of whites said that. ...

The races differed more on whether state and local police should turn over illegal immigrants they encounter, even if the immigrants have broken no state or local laws. In such cases, 45 percent of blacks and 61 percent of whites said they believe police should turn over illegal immigrants.

Asked whether people who cannot read or write English should be allowed to vote, 54 percent of blacks said they should, versus 43 percent of whites.

These findings remind me of discussions during the campaign against California Proposition 187 in 1994 -- Prop. 187 was the right's prototype for subsequent anti-immigrant legislation. We, opponents, got hammered as 59 percent of the state's voters passed the measure. But as civil rights advocate Van Jones reminded us over and over: "If only Blacks had been voting, this would not have passed." Yes, the Black community was deeply split, but exit polls showed something like 51 percent against, 49 in favor. Meanwhile nearly 80 percent of anxious California whites approved Prop. 187.

With the browning of the electorate nationally, stirring up anti-immigrant sentiment is going to become less and less useful to the right. More and more citizens look at immigrant low wage workers and think "oh, these people are like us; these people are us." Some kind of regularization of status is needed, but most of us are not seeking mass deportations.