Tuesday, October 17, 2006

NEW POLL: IMMIGRATION KEY ISSUE IN CONTESTED RACES

Public Wants Illegals to Go Home, Enforcement, No Immigration Increase

A new poll, using neutral language, finds intense voter concern over immigration in 14 tight congressional races. The surveys were conducted by the polling company inc. for the Center for Immigration Studies. In addition to a national survey, detailed polling on immigration was conducted in four contested Senate races: Missouri, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Montana; and in 10 contested House races: Arizona 5th, Connecticut 4th, Indiana 8th, Kentucky 4th, Pennsylvania 6th, Texas 17th, Louisiana 3rd, Georgia 8th, Colorado 7th, and Ohio 6th. The complete results are online at www.cis.org. Among the findings:

* Immigration is a big issue throughout the country. Of likely voters nationally, 53 percent said immigration was either their most important issue or one of their top three issues, while just 8 percent said it was not at all important. With the exception of CT-4th, in races surveyed only about 10 percent of voters said it was not important at all.

* When told numbers, voters want less immigration. When told the actual number of immigrants here (legal and illegal) and the number coming (legal and illegal), and asked to put aside the question of legal status, 68 percent of voters nationally thought immigration was too high, 21 percent about right, and just 2 percent thought it was too low. In every congressional race surveyed, the share who said overall immigration was too low was in the single digits.

* Voters less likely to vote for immigration-increasing candidates. Experts agree that the bill passed by the Senate earlier this year would at least double future legal immigration, yet 70 percent of voters said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who wanted to double legal immigration. Overwhelming majorities in every battleground race feel the same way.

* Voters reject both extremes -- legalization or mass deportations. Some previous polls have shown support for legalizing illegal immigrants. But those polls have given the public only a choice between large-scale deportations or ''earned legalization,'' and not the third choice of across-the-board enforcement, causing illegals to go home. This third option, which is the basis of the bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, is voters' top choice.

* House immigration plan by far the favorite. Enforcement approaches with no increase in legal immigration were the most popular policy option -- 44 percent wanted enforcement that causes illegals to go home, the House approach, and another 20 percent wanted large-scale deportations. Just 31 percent supported legalization of illegal immigrants.

* Intensity greater among enforcement supporters. Nationally, 32 percent of voters said they would be much more likely to vote for a candidate who would enforce the law and cause illegals to go home, compared to just 15 percent who said they would be much more likely to vote for a candidate who supports legalization. This same pattern holds in battleground House contests.

* Voters skeptical of need for unskilled immigrant labor. More than 70 percent of voters nationally agreed that there were ''plenty of Americans to do low-wage jobs that require relatively little education, employers just need to pay higher wages and treat workers better to attract Americans,'' compared to 21 percent who said we need immigrants because there were not enough Americans to do all such jobs. The results were very similar in all the contested states and districts surveyed.

* Voters think lack of enforcement is reason for illegal immigration. Three out of four voters in the nation agreed that the reason we have illegal immigration is that past enforcement efforts have been ''grossly inadequate.'' Voters strongly reject the argument that illegal immigration is caused by overly restrictive legal immigration policies. Strong majorities in every battleground contest surveyed felt this way.

* Numbers make a difference. One key finding is that when told the scale of immigration (legal and illegal), voters overwhelmingly thought it was too high. Also, when told how much the Senate bill would increase legal immigration, voters tended to reject it. This would seem to undermine the argument that voters are only concerned about illegality and not the level of immigration. The levels of immigration used in the questions are those widely agreed upon by experts based on government data.

Source

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ELSEWHERE



China Hand has just put up some photos of spectacular scenery in China. Remarkably beautiful.

Leftist eugenics lives on: "The North Korean regime's obsession with racial purity has led to the killing of disabled infants and forced abortions for women suspected of conceiving their babies by Chinese fathers, according to a growing body of testimony from defectors. The latest description of Kim Jong-il's policy of state eugenics came from a North Korean doctor, Ri Kwang-chol, who escaped last year and told a forum in Seoul that babies with deformities were killed soon after birth. "There are no people with physical defects in North Korea," Dr Ri said. Such babies were put to death by medical staff and buried quickly, he claimed. He denied ever committing the act himself."

More on the religion of peace: "About one in 10 Indonesian Muslims support jihad and justify bomb attacks on Indonesia's tourist island of Bali as defending the faith, a survey shows. Indonesia is the world's fourth most populous country, with 220 million people, 85 per cent of whom follow Islam, giving the Asian archipelago the largest Muslim population of any nation in the world. "Jihad that has been understood partially and practised with violence is justified by around one in 10 Indonesian Muslims," the Indonesian Survey Institute said in a statement."

FEMA is itself a disaster: "Two West Virginia University economics professors are drawing national attention for their recent research suggesting a link between natural disasters and political corruption. "Natural disasters create resource windfalls in the states they strike by triggering federally provided natural disaster relief," write Peter T. Leeson and Russell S. Sobel in their paper titled "Weathering Corruption." "Like windfalls created by the `natural resource curse' and foreign aid, disaster relief windfalls may also increase corruption," they say. When the Federal Emergency Management Agency sends relief funds of $1 per capita into a state, it boosts corruption in that state by nearly 2.5 percent, according to the research, which was published by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Washington. Eliminating all FEMA relief funds, the authors found, would cut corruption by more than 20 percent in a typical state, they say... The biggest boondoggles unfolded after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. A new study by the federal General Accountability Office estimates that $1 billion was stolen - nearly 19 percent of the $5.4 billion in funds FEMA sent to Gulf Coast states... Their statistical analysis showed other government funds flowing into a state did not have the same effect. "Both non-FEMA-related state discretionary spending and federal spending are insignificant. Only FEMA relief impacts public corruption."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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