Tuesday, January 15, 2008

[Clarification: since at least one conservative has taken the headline on this post a bit personally, let me state that "loser" is meant here in the strategic sense of winning or losing elections.]

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The recent arrest of Mynor Montufar has triggered a string of letters to the editor in the ProJo and posts on Anchor with a similar focus, particularly the generally ill-advised idea of having a string of children as teenagers. Today, Bill Felkner of the Ocean State Policy Research Institute released a related statement, questioning Steve Brown's description of Montufar as "a hard-working immigrant."

All this goes to the seeming point that immigration remains a hot button in Rhode Island and elsewhere around the US. We recall how the topic dominated the first half-hour of one of the nationally televised GOP presidential debates.

Yet there's a big disconnect here. I've written before (here and here) about how focusing on illegal immigration has been an unsuccessful strategy for candidates in other states (for the record, N4N believes the US should have secure borders). And Dan Kennedy today has more information to support the view that illegal immigration is not a big issue with voters:

A New York Times/CBS News national poll of Democrats and Republicans shows that the constant drumbeat over illegal immigration simply isn't registering.

According to the underlying data (PDF), just 5 percent believe that immigration is the most important problem facing the country — well behind war and Iraq (a cumulative 22 percent) and the economy (20 percent), and slightly behind health care (7 percent).

When asked what kind of change they most want to see the next president bring about, reducing illegal immigration (4 percent of respondents) was again well down on the list, behind improving the economy (20 percent), dealing with the war in Iraq (14 percent), improving health care (6 percent) and helping the middle class (5 percent).

Just to reinforce the point, John McCain — perceived as taking the least draconian stand on illegal immigration of any Republican presidential candidate — now gets the highest favorability ratings.

As Globe columnist Joan Vennochi points out, even though Gov. Deval Patrick is taking a political risk with his not-quite-proposal to extend in-state tuition rates to illegal immigrants, Patrick is well aware that immigrant-bashing has proved to be a loser of an issue.