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Let
me arm you with some very important numbers to resist a frantic push
today by open-borders-leaning journalists and pundits to persuade
congressional Republicans to help Pres. Obama pass a mass amnesty early
next year.
Their
argument is that Gov. Romney's highly public support for immigration
enforcement cost him the election. And they suggest that Pres. Obama's
support for legalizing illegal aliens was a much more popular position
with voters.
Many
Bush-era-retreads are part of the loud chorus of demands that
Republicans will improve their popularity if they stop blocking
amnesties.
Not so, according to exit polling by The Polling Company/Woman Trend.
STARTLING EXIT POLL FINDING
The
scientific national sampling of Americans after they voted found 50%
had voted for Obama and 47% for Romney (close to the actual results).
And it asked the voters this question:
QUESTION: In this election, were you more inclined to vote for candidates who favor . . .
(a) Providing an opportunity for illegal immigrants to become legal and remain in the country
(b) Enforcing and strengthening laws against illegal immigration to encourage them to return home
(c) Not making any changes to the current immigration law
The
poll was commissioned by the Federation for American Immigration
Reform. FAIR supports the (b) attrition through enforcement option, but
the wording of the poll was straightforward and neutral.
Only 31% of voters said they were more inclined toward candidates who favor the (a) legalization option. That was Obama's position.
But
52% of voters said they were more inclined toward candidates who
favored the (b) enforcement option, which was Romney's position.
Clearly,
Romney was advocating the more popular position by backing enforcement
to cause illegal aliens to go home. And the results indicate that lots
of people voted for Obama despite his position on legalization.
For a fine overview of other polling and analysis of the media's illogical conclusions from this election, be sure to read (and comment on) Jeremy's blog.
PRO-Enforcement Romney Had Better 'Spreads' Than NON-Enforcement McCain In Most High-Hispanic States
With
so much attention being given to Hispanic voting in the states, we
wanted to see how such a strong pro-enforcement candidate like Romney
did in the 20 states with the highest percentage of Hispanic voters.
The
question on positions is not really about how a position might affect a
single demographic group but what might be the overall net effect among
all voters of that state.
So,
we compared Romney's overall voter performance in those 20 states with
that of the Republican nominee in 2008. While Romney ran as a decided
PRO-enforcement candidate pushing especially for interior enforcement to
keep illegal aliens from jobs and benefits, John McCain ran as a
NON-enforcement candidate. He didn't oppose enforcement (like Obama),
but he didn't advocate it.
What
we found was that PRO-enforcement Romney significantly improved his
"spread" in those high-Hispanic states, over that of NON-enforcement
McCain.
For
example, Obama's spread over McCain in Nevada was 12%. That means his
share of the vote was 12 percentage points higher than McCain's.
But
Obama's Nevada spread over Romney was 6%. The PRO-enforcement Romney
improved the spread by 6 points. For whatever reasons, Romney's heavy
pro-enforcement positions did not end up causing him to do worse than
McCain who didn't push enforcement.
In
Arizona, native-son McCain's spread over Obama was 9%. Romney's spread
was 12%. So, Romney improved the GOP's Arizona spread by 3 points.
In 16 of the top 20 Hispanic states, Romney improved on McCain's spread with Obama:
Utah by 19 points
Illinois by 9 points
Kansas by 7 points
Nevada by 6 points
Connecticut by 6 points
Colorado by 5 points
New Mexico by 5 points
Washington by 5 points
Texas by 5 points
California by 3 points
Arizona by 3 points
Georgia by 3 points
Hawaii by 3 points
Florida by 2 points
Maryland by 1 point
There
was no change in the spread in New York and Rhode Island. Romney's
spread was worse than McCain's by 2 points in New Jersey and by 3 points
in Idaho.
You
may have noticed that there aren't many swing states in that list.
That's because Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin, Iowa, New Hampshire and other
highly competitive states have very small Hispanic electorates.
It
would be foolish to conclude that Romney's pro-enforcement positions
were the primary cause of his improvement over McCain. But the
open-borders journalists and pundits seem to be trying to say the
opposite -- that maybe Romney lost some of these states because of his
pro-enforcement positions even though he actually had some significant
improvements over the non-enforcement GOP candidate in the last
election.
For
a much more thoughtful look at how issues other than immigration are
the reason for Republicans' difficulty with Hispanic voters, read this blog in Slate.
Whether
or not most Hispanic voters were able to find their way through all the
media bombast, hyperbole and misdirection about Romney's immigration
stance, a poll last month shows that most Hispanic voters suppport
Romney's key plank of mandating E-Verify to keep illegal aliens from
getting U.S. jobs.
Perhaps
Romney didn't communicate his position adeptly enough. Even more
likely is that most Hispanic voters marked their ballots based on a host
of other issues in their choice for president. But Republicans failed
to get the votes of anywhere near the number of Hispanic Americans who
favor mandatory E-Verify.
A Pulse Opinion Research poll released last month found 66% of Hispanic voters favoring mandatory E-Verify.
The
question was: Do you support or oppose requiring that every employer
use E-Verify to electronically ensure that no U.S. job goes to illegal
immigrants in the future?
75% of all voters said YES.
69% of Hispanic voters said YES.
The
majority of Romney's immigration policy was just that. Mandatory
E-Verify was nearly the whole basis of what he meant by
"self-deportation." What he explained was that he would take away the
jobs magnet and mainly let illegal immigrants make their own decisions
about moving back home.
The
question just before the E-Verify question was: Do you believe most
parents around the world would stop bringing their children illegally to
this country if they thought finding a job was doubtful?
66% of all voters said YES.
70% of Hispanic voters said YES.
Can
these results be in the ballpark? Well, on the survey's question of
sympathizing with so-called Dream-Act illegal immigrants, the result for
Hispanic voters was 62%, with only 8% saying "not at all sympathetic."
This poll did not over-sample Hispanics, so the margin of error was
fairly high. Nonetheless, the key point here is that at least half of
Hispanic voters recognize that illegal immigration is bad for the
country and that taking away the jobs magnet with mandatory E-Verify is a
great way to slow it down.
Thus,
taking a stand for mandatory E-Verify should not hurt a candidate,
especially Republicans who rarely get more than 33% of Hispanic votes.
Any
candidate -- Republican or Democrat -- has an opportunity to improve
standing with Hispanic voters by connecting support for E-Verify to
tackling high unemployment among Hispanic Americans.
BUT DO WE FURTHER LOOSEN THE LABOR MARKET DURING TIMES OF HIGH JOBLESSNESS AND STAGNANT WAGES?
Finally,
we must ask the pundits why they are insisting on loosening the labor
market and further driving down the value of labor for our American
workers.
Does morality ever enter the minds of these political scribblers?
America
has a gigantic excess supply of workers. Even if increasing that
supply would gain some short-term political advantage, is that really
worth causing more suffering among the victims of that over-supply?
When
House Speaker Boehner (R) and Majority Leader Cantor (R) say they don't
want to hear any more enforcement talk from their Republican Members,
all of you have to insist that your own Republican Congressman (if you
have one) talks morality and what is right for American workers.
When
Senate Majority Leader Reid promises that he will push a
foreign-worker-increase bill through next year, all of you have to
insist that your own Democratic Senator (if you have one) talks morality
and what is right for American workers.
We
cannot let up in our fight for less immigration and a tighter labor
market while 20 million of our fellow Americans want a full-time job but
can't find one, and when many millions more are stuck with declining
real wages that already are barely able to support a family.
I
THANK ALL OF YOU FOR ALL YOU HAVE DONE THROUGH THE YEARS TO SHOW THIS
KIND OF COMPASSION FOR THE MOST VULNERABLE OF OUR FELLOW CITIZENS,
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