Immigration Madness: Is Amnesty 'Fool's Gold'?

Michael Barone on the midterms:

Blacks and Hispanics. Black voters remained almost unanimously Democratic this year. Not so Hispanics, who voted Republican in Florida and only mildly Democratic in Texas, where Republicans captured two Hispanic-majority House seats on the Mexican border. And Republicans Brian Sandoval and Susana Martinez were elected governor in Nevada and New Mexico. [E.A.]

One of those two Hispanic-majority Texas House seats was won by Francisco "Quico" Canseco, who summarized his views on "comprehensive" immigration reform" as follows:

CANSECO – "I don’t think we need any immigration reform." ...

Also:

"We’ve seen in 1986 what comprehensive immigration (reform) got us – it got us nowhere," Canseco said. "It just got us an additional 12 million more illegal immigrants in this country. What we need with regards to immigration is to enforce the laws that are already on the books. Make sure that we have our border patrol and other law enforcement agencies able to defend our border and protect our border from people who are not coming in here other than illegally or to do us harm."

In the other Hispanic-majority Texas district discussed by Barone, Solomon Ortiz, a legalization supporter, lost to Blake Farenthold, who at least says, "I oppose amnesty (sometimes called a path to citizenship)."

This is more evidence (on top of this) that, while the Latino "sleeping giant" is waking up, it's also changing. By the time it's fully awake, will it automatically support "comprehensive" amnesty? Or will its views have drifted in the direction of Rep.-elect Canseco?

No wonder legalization enthusiasts like Rep. Luis Gutierrez are feverishly demanding an amnesty payoff now, while they can still pretend that it is the single overriding "litmus-test" obsession of Hiispanic-Americans.

But maybe it's amnesty that's political "fool's gold" ... 11:53 a.m.

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Latino Derision: The exit poll on Election Day found that Jerry Brown beat Meg Whitman among Latino voters by a 63-34 margin. Comes now Greenberg Quinlan Rosner with a poll, taken in the weeks after the election, finding that Latinos remember voting for Brown by an 80-15 margin (at least when they are talking to bilingual interviewers). I don't know which poll is right, but isn't it a well-documented effect that voters remember voting with a popular winner more than they actually did? If so, why would reporters uncritically accept the second poll?

The Greenberg poll was conducted with the help of an organization called Latino Decisions, which declared the very idea that Whitman might have gotten 34 percent of the Latino vote "laughable" on its face, given her "contradictory statements" on immigration—as if that is all Latino voters care about. (Clearly it's all Latino Decisions cares about.) Maybe Whitman got 34 percent. Maybe she didn't. But if a poll shows she got 34 percent that's hardly in itself evidence that the poll is wrong, given Whitman's assiduous efforts to pivot after the GOP primary and court California Hispanics  At least she made "contradictory statements"! ... 

P.S.:  I suppose Latino Decisions also finds it "laughable" that a Latino majority district in Texas would elect an anti-amnesty Republican. Prima facie evidence of fraud, don't you think? Latino Decisions should demand a recount ...11:25 a.m.

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