Friday, February 5, 2010

CA - Voters Increasingly Pessimistic IMMIGRATION TOPS ISSUES

DESPITE TELLING THE POLITICIANS WE DO NOT WANT MORE ILLEGALS, AT THIS MOMENT THEY’RE WORKING ON ANOTHER DEM BIT BY BIT AMNESTY.

AMNESTY, OPEN BORDERS, NO WALL, NO E-VERIFY, and NO LEGAL NEED APPLY HERE advocates are:

BARACK OBAMA, Feinstein, Pelosi, Waxman, Reid, Boxer,Lofgren.


SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

VOTERS INCREASINGLY PESSIMISTIC - IMMIGRATION TOPS ISSUES


(11-02) 04:00 PDT Sacramento

California voters are becoming increasingly pessimistic, with immigration issues topping their worries, according to a new Field Poll released Friday.



In a survey in the spring, half of voters interviewed statewide said that California was among the best places in the world to live, with 52 percent saying the Golden State was also moving in the right direction.
But now, burdened by a sputtering economy and doubts about the ability of elected officials to deal with mounting problems, voters' outlook is split - 42 percent of them said the state is headed in the right direction, while 42 percent gave a negative view and 16 percent were undecided.
And immigration and border protection questions have jumped back into the forefront of voter issues.
Two years ago, the last time the poll asked an open-ended question about voter concerns, just 6 percent of those interviewed identified immigration as their top concern.
In the new poll, 21 percent of voters named immigration and border control as their top concern - well ahead of public schools (13 percent) and the economy (9 percent).
"There's a lot of reasons, but when we see concerns about the economy, we usually see a spike on immigration, too," said Jaime Regalado, director of the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs at California State University Los Angeles. "It's a pocketbook issue - but it's an issue that has just not gone away."
The poll, conducted during the 10-day period ending Oct. 21, was drawn from random telephone interviews with 579 registered voters. It had a sampling error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.
Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll, said he believes many voters had expected Congress and President Bush to work out a comprehensive immigration bill by now and the lack of a deal has disappointed them.
"Voters were led to believe that there would be some kind of immigration reform coming out of Washington," DiCamillo said. "But it never took hold, there was too much opposition and it's led to a great deal of frustration on this issue."
A Field Poll from July 2006 found that even during better economic times, 58 percent of Californians believed the problem of illegal immigration was a serious one; with 71 percent saying the number of federal agents patrolling the border should be increased.
The new poll did not include any follow-up questions about immigration, although the issue was mentioned more frequently among voters in Los Angeles County - 30 percent - than voters in the Bay Area (21 percent) and in Southern California outside of Los Angeles (19 percent.)
Bill Hing, a law professor who specializes in immigration issues from UC Davis, said there has been a great of media coverage of the border issues and illegal immigration over the past two years as a result of efforts in Washington to overhaul the laws and the many protest marches put on by pro-immigrant groups.
"I really think there's a lot of Americans who don't think immigration is that big a deal," he said. "But when you had these big demonstrations with people waving the Mexican flag - the truth is many Americans don't like seeing pro-immigration protests."

Hing and Regalado also noted that several popular talk-radio stations - mostly in Southern California - and CNN commentator Lou Dobbs have made immigration a central theme of their broadcasts.

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