In December 1993, while considering a primary challenge to Governor Pete Wilson of California, I commissioned an extremely detailed survey of 1,200 Republican primary voters, with one of the main sections being an analysis of their views on the crucial issue of immigration.

At first glance, the results seemed to confirm the conventional wisdom on illegal immigration with the respondents rating “stopping illegal immigrants at the border” at 4.3 in importance (on a scale of 1-5), second only to crime control (4.5), and slightly ahead of job creation and tax limitation. But when voters were then asked the reasons behind their immigration concerns (in two parallel subsamples of 600 each, dealing with illegal and legal immigrants respectively), neither illegal nor legal immigrants were viewed as taking jobs away from other Californians, as committing much crime, or as generally turning California into a “Third world” state. The only issues that raised significant concerns were the financial drain of illegal immigrants on welfare (4.1), fears that legal and illegal immigrants weren’t learning English in the schools (3.2 combined), and anger that legal and illegal immigrants and their children would benefit unfairly from affirmative action (3.3 combined).

Next, respondents were informed that some studies showed that most illegal/legal immigrants were paying taxes, obeying laws, trying to learn English, and weren’t on welfare; by better than 2-1 the response was that under such circumstances, immigration was not a serious problem in California. Following this, the respondents indicated by a margin of nearly 4-1 that they agreed that immigrants were being unfarily blamed by politicians for problems like crime and welfare, which were more connected with the native-born urban underclass than with legal or illegal immigrants.

Finally, a subsampled of 600 was informed that a hypothetical candidate believed that immigrants — both legal and illegal — were being scapegoated by politicians, and that if welfare benefits were cut and bilingual education and affirmative action stopped, then immigration would again become an actual plus for California. A majority of the subsample agreed, and more significantly, the voters of this subsample were willing to support the hypothetical candidate on a sample ballot just as strongly as were the other 600 subsample: A pro-immigration stance had incurred no political cost. All of this data indicate that the immigration issue is largely a proxy for concerns about welfare, affirmative action, bilingual education, and multiculturalism, and is much broader than it is deep.

The result of my actual gubernatiorial primary race supports this conclusion. Despite my complete lack of name recognition or political experience, my being outspent nearly four to one by Governor Wilson, and my public opposition to immigrant bashing, in just eight weeks of campaigning I raised my support from 8 percent to 34 percent by election day, including nearly half of all Republican voters age 50 and under.



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