Most Americans support Arizona immigration law

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Thu Jun 17, 11:51 am ET

A new Washington Post/ABC poll finds that 58 percent of Americans support Arizona's tough new immigration law. Support is strongest among Republicans and independents, and least strong among Democrats, especially minority Democrats.

Still, the support is qualified in some respects. Even as a majority of Americans back the measure — which gives law enforcement officers authority to check the immigration status of people they have stopped or arrested — 57 percent of Americans also favor giving illegal immigrants who are already in the country a chance to become legal, if they pay fines and meet other requirements. Almost half of Republicans polled also support the path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

In another result that rubs against the logic of the Arizona law, just 46 percent of respondents agree that states should be able to make their own border policies.

The poll also shows that many Americans do not approve of how President Obama is handling border issues. Fifty-one percent of respondents overall gave him negative ratings — with 56 percent of independents disapproving of his handling of immigration. Obama announced last month that he would send 1,200 National Guard members to the border to help train Border Patrol officers.

The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

— Liz Goodwin is a national affairs writer for Yahoo! News.

[A Revolutionary Tool]

In my experience nobody has any idea about what the immigration "reform" actually is. I've talked to many conservatives about this and they knew nothing about it but that it was called immigration "reform"(When are we going to stop calling things reform when they really suck) and that it tries to deal with illegal immigration. They support it not because they actually know anything about it but because they see it as something actually being done about the situation. That's just been my experience though I'm starting to wonder if the conservative base knows anything about the laws and positions they support.

[Tablo]

Ewwww.. I think the support comes from a lack of understanding of what the immigration bill actually proposes. Also, many people in this country have some twisted views when it comes to immigration policy. Just a guess though.

[the last donut of the night]

It's actually more complicated than that:

http://socialistworker.org/2010/06/16/right-shift-on-immigration

[praxis1966]

That's just been my experience though I'm starting to wonder if the conservative base knows anything about the laws and positions they support.

Trust me, they don't. I had an argument concerning this very topic via FailBook which ran over the course of a couple of weeks with a conservative friend of mine. In the end, it boiled down to his complete lack of understanding of the basic ways in which the American legal system functions. He'd actually bought into the lie proliferated by the talking heads on Fox News that undocumented immigrants were all criminals because they had violated the law.

I tried explaining to him that this wasn't the case, since immigration law is part of the civil, not the criminal, code. I even cited the applicable federal statutes accompanied by quotations from the Attorney General, all to no avail. The conversation essentially boiled down to the fact that he refused to accept the reality that just because something is illegal (like breach of contract, for instance) it doesn't necessarily follow that it's a crime. Basically, he was arguing from the lay definition of the word crime (moral crimes, ethical crimes, crimes of fashion) which is much broader than the legal definition of the word crime, which is very specific.

Anyway, this is all longhand for what I really think: All Republicans got that way through rash emotionalism and erroneous conclusions that have no basis in material reality. In other words, they're fucking stupid.

[Slavoj Zizzle]

I got news for you guys. America is a nation founded on racism, both in theory and in practice. Racism is probably the largest factor in preventing real socialism from taking over in the post-civil war era, both in the south and the north. People know full well that this immigration bill is racist and reactionary, they just don't care. The label racist has become a curse word, so you'll have a hard time getting people to admit it, but actual racism is alive and well. Any fight against racism, such as immigration "reform" battles, is going to be an uphill battle, and arguably an un-winnable one depending on our goals.

[MarxSchmarx]

Yet when you break it down by race, only 31% of peole of color support the law
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/06/18/poll-58-percent-of-americans-support-arizona-immigration-law/

The 58% derives from 70% of white people who say they support the law.

[The Fighting_Crusnik]

I think much of the support comes from the media coverage of the hostage situations/shootings that are being linked to the drug trade. Tbh, these things are without doubt problems, but by kicking out all of the "aliens" without any thought of compassion, nothing is going to change. If conservatives and others want to deal with this problem, they need to learn to deal with the problem directly rather than working around the problem like the typically do...

[Proletarian Ultra]

I got news for you guys. America is a nation founded on racism, both in theory and in practice. Racism is probably the largest factor in preventing real socialism from taking over in the post-civil war era, both in the south and the north. People know full well that this immigration bill is racist and reactionary, they just don't care. The label racist has become a curse word, so you'll have a hard time getting people to admit it, but actual racism is alive and well. Any fight against racism, such as immigration "reform" battles, is going to be an uphill battle, and arguably an un-winnable one depending on our goals.

Racism is the primary contradiction in America - and the anti-immigrant apparatus most of all.

I read in USA Today last week (lay off, I was waiting in line at Dunkin' Donuts!) that nearly half of US births are to minorities. Texas is already majority-minority, although its voting population isn't yet. Georgia, Mississippi, Nevada and Arizona aren't far behind.

The present fight over immigration reform is a fantastic opportunity for revolutionaries. First of all, it has to go through. Much like healthcare reform it's a structural necessity; large capital can no longer accomodate the chaos caused by a vast clandestine population.

Legalizing undocumented workers drives a wedge between the petty from the haute bourgeoisie and forces proletarians to take sides with or against the themselves as a class. Once legalization has been accomplished, it sets in motion the inevitable fight for brown civil rights, which will necessarily take on more and more of a class character, just as the fight for black civil rights increasingly did before it was crushed in the Nixon-Carter-Reagan reaction.

[Enragé]

57 percent of Americans also favor giving illegal immigrants who are already in the country a chance to become legal, if they pay fines and meet other requirements.

if you're there illegal you can't work legally, so to pay your fines for having broken the law you have to break the law! And that'll probably add to your fines, so you'll have to keep breaking the law. wtf?!

[black magick hustla]

the border crossed us

[black magick hustla]

dont worry tho we've been outbreeding the whites since 1848 in the american southwest

[black magick hustla]

In all honestly. When people ask me about immigration I never know what to say because they want me to give policies or a tip on the way capitalism runs. I can see why unlimited immigration will fuck the capitalist state and security in general but I do not care I want this society to go down.

[Guerrilla22]

That is also a poll by a major US media outlet. Their polls rely heavily on sampling and are hardly scientific.

[Jimmie Higgins]

It's actually more complicated than that:

http://socialistworker.org/2010/06/16/right-shift-on-immigration

You beat me to the link.:lol:

As you said, it's more complicated than how the US media is reporting it. However, I think the one concrete effect of this so far is that it has allowed anti-Latino racism an open door into the mainstream. So now it is much more common to hear racist nativists just say "Mexicans" instead of the "illegal immigrant" euphemism they had been using before. The Arizona shit along with the way the media has covered it has brought scapegoating more mainstream acceptability. The racist hysteria has also led to increases in KKK recruitment as they have shifted to a more nativist and anti-immigrant stance.

So while I think the racists who were racist before have become emboldened and have a bigger platform for their xenophobic poison, general public opinion is much more dynamic and fluid. There is also a galvanization of many latinos and young people in general against anti-immigrant racism as seen in all the immigrant right rallies and protests in Arizona and across the country... these protests are almost always larger, yet the media seems to think a movement is only valid if it is of white middle aged bigots fighting to protect inequality and the staus quo.