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Many U.S. Hispanics Surprisingly Anti-Immigration, Pew Study Shows
August 16, 2005
By Cara Marcano
A sizable chunk of the native-born U.S. Hispanic population — between 20 percent and 35 percent — is against increasing the flow of immigrants, documented or not, to the U.S. from Latin America, a study released today by the Pew Hispanic Center shows.
The Pew Hispanic Survey of U.S. Latinos was conducted via random dial telephone interviews conducted with 1,001 Hispanics nationwide from June 14 to June 27, with a margin of error of 3.1 percent.
“There is a significant minority particularly among the native-born Latinos who express negative assessments of immigrants, particularly the unauthorized,” says Robert Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic Center and author of the study. “The views of the native-born are still more positive toward immigration than those of the general U.S. population, but they are less and less similar to those of recently arrived immigrants.”
Some 65 percent of U.S. foreign-born Hispanics said that immigrants have a positive effect on the United States, but only 25 percent of native-born Hispanics agreed.
When asked about public policy, U.S. Hispanics continue to say they are far more concerned about issues such as healthcare and jobs. The study’s findings support earlier demographic data used during last year’s presidential campaign showing that though politicians often focus their Hispanic-targeted campaign messages on topics such as immigration policy and the United States’ Latin American foreign policy, they often fail to speak to the issues of greatest importance to many Hispanics.
“Education tracks highest and immigration and the war on terror track much, much lower down on the list of Hispanics’ priorities,” Suro says.
Regarding current domestic political debates, a majority of Hispanic registered voters (53 percent) said they are in favor of denying driver’s licenses to all immigrants who are in the U.S. without proper legal documentation. In May, Congress passed The Real ID Act, which articulated such a policy, and was signed into federal law by President Bush. Among foreign-born immigrants, only 29 percent approve of such a law, compared with 60 percent of native-born Hispanics who said they favor it, according to the Pew study.
Anti-immigration feelings ran strongest among middle-aged and middle-class Hispanics, who often say they feel undocumented immigrants are holding their wages down.
“The direct competition over wages is happening at the lower ends of the economy, but the resentment is actually among the middle-class,” says Suro.
When it comes to undocumented immigrants already residing in the U.S., the position of the majority of Hispanics softened. Of the immigration legislation introduced by President George W. Bush this summer for Congress’ consideration when it reconvenes in September, Hispanics were less supportive of Bush’s temporary worker program, which would allow Mexican immigrants to temporarily come to work in the U.S.
Fifty-six percent of Hispanics surveyed approved of The White House’s proposed temporary worker program, while a much larger majority (84 percent) of those interviewed for the study, said they favor proposals to give permanent legal status to unauthorized immigrants, who could later become U.S. citizens.
Any anti-immigration sentiment found among Hispanics already in the U.S. is clearly doing little to deter the flow of immigrants from Mexico, for example, according to another previous Pew study of 1,200 Mexicans, conducted from February to May 2005, also released today.
Four out of 10 Mexicans surveyed said they would go to the U.S. to live and work if they had “the means and opportunity.” And two out of 10 said they would be willing to come to the U.S. without proper documentation to work, according to that study.
“Contrary to what people might expect, the inclination to migrate isn’t contained only among Mexicans who are poor or who have limited education or economic prospects,” says Suro. “Positive responses to these questions are distributed across the whole breadth of Mexican society. It’s very strong in the middle-class and among Mexicans who have been to college.”
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