Media manipulation on immigration polls

Debra Saunders:

There's a way in which journalists insert how they think Americans should stand on an issue, and you see it in stories on the Kennedy-Kyl immigration bill that tanked so spectacularly in Washington last week.

Many newspapers reported that opinion polls showed that voters supported "major provisions" of the measure -- usually without mentioning that polls also found that more voters opposed the bill than supported it.

That fact gets in the way of the pet media narrative: Popular pro-immigrant bill torpedoed by what the Los Angeles Times called a "vocal minority." A Sunday New York Times story explained how grassroots conservatives toppled the measure, even though: "Public opinion polls, including a New York Times-CBS News Poll conducted last month, showed broad support among Americans for the bill's major provisions."

What a crock. If this bill were popular, then Washington would have passed it in a heartbeat. If the bill were popular among Democrats, as bill supporters suggest, then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would be pushing for another vote, instead of daring President Bush to champion the measure.

And here's something the New York Times story forgot to mention: Its poll also found that 69 percent of Americans think illegal immigrants should be prosecuted and deported.

No story there, I see. Pollster Scott Rasmussen found that 50 percent of voters opposed the immigration bill, while only 23 percent approved of it. "The immigration bill failed because a broad cross-section of the American people is opposed to it," Rasmussen wrote. "Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters are opposed. Men are opposed. So are women. The young don't like it; neither do the no-longer-young. White Americans are opposed. Americans of color are opposed."

While most Americans may support giving illegal immigrants the ability to become citizens if they work and have no criminal record -- a major provision cited in widely reported polls -- what voters really want is less illegal immigration and stronger border enforcement. Rasmussen found that only 16 percent of voters believed the Kennedy-Kyl bill would do that.

Rasmussen summed up the public attitude as, "What difference does it make what rules we have, if anyone can walk in anyhow?"

...

It still looks like their scam is going to work, but the proponents of this amnesty will have to cough up more funds for border protection as the price of the amnesty. Saunders makes the point later in her piece that being honest about the amnesty might have helped the proponents. They allowed themselves to be tied into knots on semantic arguments over a bill that gives advantage to the law breakers over those who comply. All of the so called penalties apply just to the citizenship track and not to the instant legalization track.