I would not believe anything he says.  He uses marketing techniques even when he talks about his use of marketing techniques.  The purpose of his poll reports is not to relay information, but to spin the debate.  

This sentence illustrates an assumption:

Nevertheless, it's hard to imagine that many Minutemen voted for Democratic candidates opposed to, say, the criminalization of providing aid to undocumented residents.

The assumption is that people opposed to illegal immigration are for the "criminalization of providing aid to undocumented residents."  I am strongly opposed to illegal immigration.  Paradoxically, I am not opposed to providing aid to illegal immigrants.

I want the pro-human approach.  Of course give aid to any human being in need.  If not for the basic humanity of it, then for selfish reasons:  Tuberculosis doesn't know it lives in a ghetto and has no problem moving to a gated community.

My cure for illegal immigration is to take the honey pot away from the anthill -- bring down draconian measures on any employer of illegal labor.

I said it when Frist first declared war on immigrants early this year: After all that work putting der Gropinator in as the public beachhead of the California Publicans, they've chosen to throw away California for the next generation.

And guess what, it turns out there are recent immigrants in places other than California! We all have a little California.

I still cannot imagine what the fuck they were thinking.

Well, it's a bit in Luntz's interest to paint the issue this way.  He did a TON of work pushing the anti-immigrant line for the Republicans, setting up specific language to use, and so on.

If that work failed, his reputation is somewhat tarnished, so he's got an incentive to bring the Republicans back to that work, and probably to charge them again.

I think they truly believe(d?) they can abandon everyone but white christians and still win. It's the only explaination for using BARELY veiled racism against a large and growing demographic - they just don't think it matters.

I predict they're wrong. And I predict that being seen as the party of racist a**es will not serve them well in many other demographics, as well.

I believe some of it ...even here in the south.

The immigrant workers work long and hard and are respected for their industry ...if nothing else.

An earlier thread talked about using language to define politics.  Conservative vs Liberal.  This is an example of where language may help or has helped us.  

In the south, conservative is a codeword for biggot, as much as liberal is for tolerance.  Immigrants know the conservative republicans are biggots.  We should from now on always use the words "biggot conservative" or "conservative biggot" when referring to these people.

After all the republicans southern strategy was to code conservative with their underlying biggotry.

I personally like "damned conservative biggot," myself

Isn't this also an issue with John McCain? Here is a senator from a mexico border state that can't seem to pin the evangelical's ears back.

Why is it that John McCain couldn't rally support for what honestly looks like a fair policy ? People who come here to work, might as well go on the radar. We have had enough immigrants to this country to say that is America, don't we?

Good lord. So many people come here and think they are hiding out from the federal government. Why instead can't we, as a country, square everything up?

Honestly I don't see the problem in an amnesty program. I think it makes sense. And those people who are part of the border thrashing , less than two years - wow. When they go, what a benefit it will be to this country.

No, I think the thing about John McCain here is that if he can't rally a moderate base, why would he be their leader?

IMO Luntz has it all wrong.  The Gop never had the Hispanic vote, the last election cycle (04) was simply a rare occurence where they increased their Hispanic vote.  Furthermore, Dems are not pro illegal immigration.  The Unions across the nation are against it for many appearent reasons. And at the same time a great majority of Latinos are against a broad amnesty bill. The entire topic has simply been a PR failure for the GOP; which has thus benefited the DEMS. Thiers nothing wrong with "Borders, Language, and Culture."  

Thiers nothing wrong with "Borders, Language, and Culture."

Except that it has a really nasty nativist / nationalist resonance (especially that three-word slogan, which really creeps me out for reasons I won't mention for fear of triggering a Godwin's Law discussion).  

The United States was not built on that kind of exclusionary model.  In fact, the nativists have been wrong every time.  They were wrong about the Germans, the Irish, the Italians, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Filipinos, the Eastern Europeans (Jewish and otherwise), and they're wrong now.  And the arguments were almost exactly the same every single time:  they don't speak the language, they don't assimilate, they live in their own little ghettos, they bring a furrin culture that corrupts us, etc. etc.

This is good and important information. But i have a question: COuldn't Lutz data also imply that Republican voters with an "anti-immigaration" bent, were so pissed at Bush for NOT taking a hard enough line on immigration, that they registered a protest vote against GOP incumbancy?

Perhaps both sides of this worked to the Democrats advantage: insulted Latinos due the hard line GOP rhetoric, AND insulted red-staters due the not-hard-line-enough rhetoric from Bush, both revolting against the Republicans?

Patrick Thompson

The title says it all

Democrats didn't campaign on comprehensive reform because if they had, they would have lost. In Arizona the Republicans lost ground, but look what initiatives passed there: making English Arizona's official language (74%), denying bail to illegal aliens (78%), barring illegal aliens from winning punitive damages (74%), and denying in-state college tuition to illegal immigrants (72%).

Your thesis that the Republicans sounded to harsh doesn't square with that data. More likely, Democrats often copied Republican retoric against illegal immigration, while saying nary a word about comprehensive reform (or as in the case of some newly elected democrats, completely dissavowing amnesty). Add to this the confusion of Bush's support for comprehensive reform. How many marginally politically aware voters knew if thier Republican candidate differed with Bush on the issue? With all these factors taken together, some voters might be forgiven for thinking a vote against the Republicans was a vote against amnesty, a guest worker program and porous border enforcement. If you think I am full of sh**, go read the percentages by which those initiatives in arizona passed one more time.

Do Democrats really favor tax funded benefits for illegal immigrants? If you do, that's not a winning issue.

Like what?  Roads?  Emergency rooms?  Undocumented immigrants are ineligible for almost everything that most states offer except jail and school for their kids.  And they pay taxes, including the property taxes and sales taxes in their localities that go to fund the few services they do use.  Lots of taxes, up to and including SSRI and income taxes if they're using fake SSNs, and they won't see a dime of SSRI or EITC.  The "oooooh, illegals on welfare" line is basically bullshit.

Earth to Democrats: most people don't like paying taxes for illegals

Dealt with.

they don't like ballots in Spanish

Wha?  Now you've gone straight out nativist -- undocumented immigrants don't vote.  Neither do documented non-citizens.  But there are plenty of citizens who don't read English well enough to muddle through a ballot full of propositions.

and they don't like people breaking our immigration laws.

Really?  So they're boycotting cheap vegetables and pretty much all industrial meat until those industries get their shit together?  And they're asking their landscaper if all of his workers are legal?  No?  Not?  What a lot of people don't like is brown-skinned people speaking a language they don't understand.  Not sure that we ought to pander to that.

(I say this as a supporter of liberal immigration laws.).

Ooookay...  And what liberal immigration laws would you like to see?  For example, would you like to unwind the quota system that makes so many of the immigrants from Latin America unable to come legally?  We've already invited them in with the jobs that we offer.

Since trying to enforce our immigration laws and supporting our sovereignty is a loser (according to this post) and represents "nativist rhetoric" (and, no, I don't think that's an unfair characterization), could someone describe the complete details of a Latino-friendly agenda, including providing an accurate number of how many millions of new legal and illegal immigrants that plan would lead to?

And, could you also discuss other factors, such as increased political power inside the U.S. for the MexicanGovernment, the increased risk of far-left racial demagogues who even the Democratic Party would not want to be seen to be associated with (tinyurl.com/y78uh9), etc.? Could you also discuss the increased threat of TerroristInfiltration, as discussed in various government reports?

It's one thing to call names, and it's a related thing to present broad guidelines, but it's quite another to present an actual plan and also disclose everything that that plan would do.

"Like what?  Roads?  Emergency rooms?  Undocumented immigrants are ineligible for almost everything that most states offer except jail and school for their kids."

Yeh, sure. If illegals are inelegible for "almost everything" why do people keep finding federal benefits to put on initiatives to deny them (and win!)? As for roads, yes illegals drive, even in states where they can't get licences. As for emergency rooms, yes, it's common in western nations to not just let people die in the streets. When anyone walks into an emergency room in need of assistence, they get it whether they can pay or not. This is as it should be, but taxpayers and non-poor users of the medical systems do have to pay more as a consequence. Illegal aliens shouldn't be turned away from an emergency room to die, but they should have been caught at the border, and if that failed thier employer should have been fined to high heaven.  

"And they pay taxes, including the property taxes and sales taxes in their localities that go to fund the few services they do use.  Lots of taxes, up to and including SSRI and income taxes if they're using fake SSNs, and they won't see a dime of SSRI or EITC.  The "oooooh, illegals on welfare" line is basically bullshit."

Lots of taxes huh? Mexican american families have a median income of about 30,000 (see the UC Irvine paper below). Illegal aliens must have an even lower median income. I really can't fathom how you can believe that they pay in taxes for all the used services. The US spends $8,618 on average per student per year in public school. Assuming that the US is not progressive at all with flat taxes (not true at all), a family that makes 30,000 a year will pay a 27% total rate (tax revenue collected by fed + state gov. as a percent of gdp) for a payment of  $8,100. Thus, a family making the median mexican american income does not pay taxes equaling the cost of 1 child in school, even assuming a false flat-tax structure for the US. Only in an alternate universe in which the US has an actually pretty darn regressive tax-structure could illegals possibly be net tax-payers.

"So they're boycotting cheap vegetables and pretty much all industrial meat until those industries get their shit together?  And they're asking their landscaper if all of his workers are legal?  No?  Not? What a lot of people don't like is brown-skinned people speaking a language they don't understand.  Not sure that we ought to pander to that"

If you are against global warming, do you stop using products whose manufacture contributed to greenhouse gases? Why not? Maybe because it would be a massive disruption in your life, if it were even possible? The federal government lets in so many illegals that it would probably be impossible. Not undertaking a virtually impossible, herculean effort does not make you a hypocrite.

"What a lot of people don't like is brown-skinned people speaking a language they don't understand.  Not sure that we ought to pander to that."

You just had to play the race card huh? If you don't believe in amnesty you hate thier brown skin huh? I have data from the longest running study on immigrant assimilation ever done. The results show that we should be literally rushing to seal the southern border and massively cut down on legal immigration from latin america.

UC Irvine:
Study sheds light on how young adult children of immigrants assimilate

Largest, longest study of children of immigrants reveals certain groups are left behind

Irvine, Calif., October 4, 2006

While the vast majority of young adult children of immigrants experience upward economic and social mobility, a new study finds that a significant minority are suffering from lower levels of education, lower incomes, higher birth rates and higher levels of incarceration. Furthermore, it is the U.S.-born children of Mexican, Haitian and West Indian immigrants who experience these problems in the largest proportions.

The study, led by sociologists Rubén G. Rumbaut of UC Irvine and Alejandro Portes of Princeton University, appears online this week in the Migration Information Source. The largest and longest-running study of children of immigrants yet conducted, the study also confirms the critical importance of education.

"The greatest educational disadvantage is found among children of Mexican immigrants and Laotian and Cambodian refugees in our sample - close to 40 percent of whom did not go beyond a high school diploma," said Rumbaut. "Education is the key to successful upward mobility among children of immigrants, so the discrepancies that emerge in educational achievement among immigrant groups tend to persist in trends for income, employment and incarceration."

The researchers also point to the influence of human capital (the skills and education of immigrant parents) as well as family structure, racial prejudice and government policies toward certain immigrant groups - particularly the undocumented - that influence this "downward assimilation" process.

The researchers found that children of Laotian and Cambodian Americans as well as Haitian Americans had the lowest median annual household income at just over $25,000. They were followed closely by Mexican American families, which had a median annual household income of about $30,000. On the other end of the spectrum, children of upper-middle-class Cuban exiles in Southern Florida reported a household income of more than $70,000, and Filipino Americans in Southern California had more than $64,000, followed by Chinese immigrants.

Furthermore, the study found that the most educationally and economically disadvantaged children of immigrants were most likely to have children of their own at a young age, compounding their difficulties at pursuing higher education. When surveyed at the average age of 24, none of the Chinese Americans had children, while in contrast 25 percent of Haitians, West Indians, Laotians and Cambodians did, as did 41 percent of Mexican American young adults.

Differences in arrest and incarceration rates are also noteworthy, particularly among second-generation, U.S.-born, males. While only 10 percent of second-generation immigrant males in the survey had been incarcerated, that figure jumped to 20 percent among West Indian and Mexican American youths.

"Unfortunately, these trends perpetuate the racial and ethnic stereotypes that contributed to their situation in the first place," Rumbaut said. "On the positive side, we see that children of immigrant families with little money and low human capital can move forward positively in American society. But there is clearly a minority segment among the native-born children of some immigrant groups that is getting caught in a cycle of downward mobility, and we need to understand the trends that drive this process."

There are more than 30 million U.S.-born children of immigrants. Rumbaut is continuing to explore the major events influencing the social outcomes of the immigrant second generation, focusing on early childbirth for women and incarceration among men.

About the Study: The surveys were conducted over more than 10 years with random samples representing 77 different nationalities originally drawn in 1991 in San Diego, Calif., and Miami/Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., of more than 5,000 respondents who were then in junior high school, The most recent surveys were conducted from 2001 to 2004 when the respondents were between the ages of 23 and 27. The surveys are part of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study, which was designed to examine the in-depth interaction between immigrant parents and their children and the evolution of the young from adolescence into early adulthood. Results from the CILS surveys provide the most compelling current evidence to date of how the second generation adapts - from education and income to unemployment, family formation and incarceration. The study was funded with support from the Russell Sage Foundation. More: www.russellsage.org.

Immigration was a huge influence on this election so the question is how will Democrats win without the immigration debate in future elections?

My opinion on immigration: Repeal NAFTA.

pjgoober what a thesis!