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| September 20, 2008 | Saturday | Ramazan 19, 1429 |
Pessimism spreads among US Hispanics
WASHINGTON: Hispanics are increasingly pessimistic about their situation in the US and angry about the aggressive immigration enforcement policies of the Bush administration, findings that could have implications for the presidential election, according to a new survey.
Nearly 10 per cent of Hispanics said they had been stopped by police or other authorities asking about their immigration status in the past year, including eight per cent of native-born Hispanics.
Nearly 15 per cent said it has been hard to find or keep a job because they are Hispanic, and 10 percent said the same thing about finding or keeping housing. And 57 per cent of Hispanics worry that they themselves, a friend or family member will be deported, up from 53 per cent last year.
Half of those surveyed said the situation for Hispanics is worse now than a year ago. In a similar survey last year, only one-third took that view.
”There is a significant deterioration in the mood of Hispanics,” said Susan Minushkin, deputy director of the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group.
Unhappiness among Hispanics could have important consequences for the presidential election, particularly for Republican John McCain, who is striving in ads and speeches to bolster an immigrant-friendly image.
The Pew survey found that 66 per cent of Hispanic registered voters back Obama, while 23 per cent support McCain, results reported earlier. Those levels mark a swing back to traditional levels of Hispanic support for Democratic presidential candidates after a groundswell of support for President Bush in 2004.
Bush drew 40 per cent of Hispanic voters in 2004, an unprecedented showing for a Republican candidate. Democratic candidates usually pull more than 60 per cent of the Hispanic vote.
Hispanic voters make up eight per cent of the electorate, but they make up higher percentages in some key swing states, said Mark Hugo Lopez, associate director of the Pew Hispanic Institute. Hispanics will comprise 35 per cent of voters in New Mexico, 14 per cent of voters in Florida, and around 11 per cent to 12 per cent of voters in Nevada and Colorado, Lopez said.
Pew researchers found that for these voters, immigration is playing a more important role. Thirty-four per cent of Hispanics said immigration was extremely important to them personally in this presidential campaign, up from 28 per cent who said this in 2004.
And when Pew researchers asked Hispanic registered voters which candidate was better for immigrants, 50 per cent chose Obama, while only 12 per cent opted for McCain.
McCain has a record of working for immigration reform in the Senate, writing a 2006 bill with Sen Edward Kennedy, D-Mass, that would have given most illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.
McCain distanced himself from that stance in 2007, when he began campaigning. He has since said he would not vote for the bill he co-sponsored with Kennedy. But the Pew survey found intense disapproval among Hispanics, both native- and foreign-born, for immigration enforcement methods such as workplace raids and criminal prosecution of those working without proper documents.
One significant difference between native-born and foreign-born Hispanics came on the question of electronically verifying workers’ legal status. Overall, 53 per cent disapproved. But 63 per cent of foreign-born Hispanics disapproved of the policy, while just 38 per cent of native-born Hispanics disapproved. The bilingual telephone survey, conducted in June and July with 2,015 Hispanics age 18 and older, did not ask foreign-born Hispanics about their immigration status, but Minushkin noted that foreign-born respondents were not necessarily illegal immigrants.—Dawn/LA Times-Washington Post News Service
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