Hispanics concerned about immigration
By PEW HISPANIC CENTER
The Miami Herald
September 27, 2008
Below are excerpts from the report, ''2008 National Survey of Latinos,'' released last week by the Pew Hispanic Center. The report describes pessimism among Hispanics about U.S. immigration policy.
Half of all Latinos say that the situation in this country is worse now than it was a year ago, according to a nationwide survey of 2,015 Hispanic adults conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center.
This pessimism is especially prevalent among immigrants who account for 54 percent of all Hispanic adults in the United States. Fully 63 percent of these Latino immigrants say that the situation of Latinos has worsened over the past year. In 2007, just 42 percent of all adult Hispanic immigrants -- and 33 percent of all Hispanic adults -- said the same thing.
These increasingly downbeat assessments come at a time when the Hispanic community in this country -- numbering 46 million, or 15.4 percent of the total U.S. civilian noninstitutional population -- has been hit hard by rising unemployment and stepped-up immigration enforcement.
Almost one-in-10 Hispanic adults -- native-born U.S. citizens and immigrants -- report that in the past year the police or other authorities have stopped them and asked them about their immigration status.
Some Latinos are experiencing other difficulties because of their ethnicity. One-in-seven say that they have had trouble in the past year finding or keeping a job because they are Latino. One-in-10 report the same about finding or keeping housing.
Latinos disapprove of all five enforcement measures asked about in this survey -- and generally do so by lopsided margins.
More than four-in-five say that immigration enforcement should be left to federal authorities rather than the local police; 76 percent disapprove of workplace raids; 73 percent disapprove of the criminal prosecution of undocumented immigrants who are working without authorization; and 70 percent disapprove of the criminal prosecution of employers who hire undocumented immigrants. A narrow majority (53 percent) disapproves of a requirement that employers check
a federal database to verify the legal immigration status of all prospective hires.
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