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Immigration ignorance


When I was in South Carolina covering this year's Republican primary I was struck by how many supporters of Sen. John McCain thought he would be the toughest candidate on immigration, including one military veteran who said it was the most important issue to him, and said he figured McCain was the candidate who would throw all illegal immigrants out.

McCain, of course, has never been identified with that position. In fact, he was the chief champion, along with Sen. Ted Kennedy, of the bill to legalize almost all of them, putting them on a path to citizenship.

Now comes the Center for Immigration Studies, which funded a poll that finds that South Carolina veteran's misperception is shared by a lot of voters.

According to the poll of 546 Republican primary voters, only 34 percent of McCain's supporters identified him with the position of allowing illegal immigrants to stay and be put on a path to citizenship. Meanwhile, 35 percent said his approach was to "enforce the law causing illegals to go home," known as the attrition plan.

But Republicans were also not well-informed about other candidates. More than one-in-four of Rep. Ron Paul's supporters said he wanted to offer illegal immigrants a path to citizenship — a position in stark contrast to his actual get-tough stance.

Overall, a strong majority of Republican voters — 56 percent — said they want an attrition solution to the problem, while just 28 percent say the answer is to grant citizenship rights.

On the Democratic side the poll found 52 percent of Sen. Barack Obama's supporters knew he backed the citizenship rights plan, while 42 percent of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's supporters knew that she did.

That still leaves a huge chunk of voters that either misperceived their candidate's stance or didn't know. Given the far lower number of Democrats who say immigration is a top voting issue, that's not surprising. But for Republicans, who say the issue does matter, it is a shock.

Posted on April 2, 2008 9:59 AM | View blog reactions | Digg It

Comments (2)
I just love the irony here: Obama's supporters are frequently labeled as "drinking the kool-aid," blindly & mindlessly caught up in his emotional appeal without examining the issues. Yet, here they are, at least on a single issue proving themselves to be the most informed of the lot.

Posted by Elena | April 2, 2008 10:41 AM



Maybe if voters had to pass a knowledge test before voting, then Ron Paul would have won the Republican nomination.

Posted by John Campbell | April 2, 2008 11:20 AM



http://video1.washingtontimes.com/dinan ... nce_1.html