ras- just 24% have favorable opinion of protesters

[Tiggeroshii]

:wtf:

Are these millions of people suddenly politicians? Is there something I missed?

---------------------------------------------------------------

May 1, 2006--Heading into a day of planned protests and boycotts for immigrant rights, just 24% of American voters have a favorable opinion of the people who have recently marched and protested for immigrant rights in major cities. A Rasmussen Reports national opinion survey of 1,000 Likely Voters conducted on the eve of the May 1 events found that 52% have an unfavorable opinion of the marchers (see earlier results).



http://www.rasmussenreports.com/2006/April%20Dailies/Immigration%20April%2029-30.htm

[Deep13]

1. Yes, ...

...you missed the perspective or ordinary, nonactivist people. They see illegal aliens as sneaking into the country, suppressing their wages and making demands on a government of a country where they have no right to be. Most people equate illegal with immoral. I frankly think our side in Congress is squarely on the wrong side of this issue.

[Tiggeroshii]

2. hmm

"I frankly think our side in Congress is squarely on the wrong side of this issue."

Which side do you think the Congressional Dems should be on this issue?

[Deep13]

11. Law, order, a sustainable economy and the American workers. nt

[nickshepDEM]

23. Hear, hear!

[serryjw]

4. You mean someone agrees with me?

I felt like the Lone Ranger.Businesses are closing, reducing hours or working with skeleton crews. Did any of the Leaders of this March help us organize when 2 elections were stolen, 2 countries were invaded, the Patriots Act was signed? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, ask anyone them why they are here and they will not say for Freedom or Democracy. They want a job! Dahhhhhhh, so does another 6.5 billion people( including millions of LEGAL Americans)

[TriMetFan]

38. Well then may-be we should ask the Hispanic Leaders

to teach us how to Unit and Protest the right way so we can shut down our Government and to make our point.

[earthside]

5. You Got It!

This boycott and the marches expose the 'Achilles Heel' of progressives/liberals/leftists ... they confuse compassion for the exploited and oppressed with sound, just, and equitable policies.

Average Americans do understand plain common sense -- a surplus of cheap labor drives down all wages and benefits, it's supply and demand. That is why the protesters get little sympathy from average working class and poor citizens.

Hey, when you're ending up on the same side as Bush and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, you ought to question where you are ... Wall Street and the NAFTA-loving transnational corporations are thrilled at these marches, cheap labor inside the U.S. is a dream come true for tham.

[El Fuego]

24. Exactly. It's shouldn't be a "liberal" issue.

As a liberal, I care about what is good for society as a whole, and I believe that the needs of society outweigh the needs of the individual. An uncontrolled influx of impoverished people would be disastrous for the U.S.

We're being asked to put aside what is best for SOCIETY to satisfy the needs, wants, and demands of INDIVIDUALS. The "ME-ME gimme mine NOW and to hell with everyone else!" approach is part of the conservative philosophy.

[Le Taz Hot]

30. I'm sorry, you'll have to hand in your

"librul" card and peace sign. And slip your "burkies" under the door as you leave. It's amusing how many people will fall all over themselves in an attempt to prove how liberal they are while NEVER actually examining what it is that they're advocating -- exploitation of undocumented workers, supporting unscrupulous employers and undermining union and liveable wages for citizens. Oh yeah, and by the way, you're a racist, too. :sarcasm:

[El Fuego]

31. Well aren't you just SO cute

Here's a news flash: "Hispanic" is NOT a race. Spanish-speaking societies include people of many different races. It seems that you are a racist, as you cannot recognize this.

This more-liberal-than-thou shit of yours is asinine. These are the types of things LIBERALS have accomplished and are working for: social security, medicaid, food stamps, welfare, the hope of universal health care, access to college educations for the underprivileged, etc. etc. etc.

Here's what people like YOU are advocating by proposing to allow unlimited immigration: THE DESTRUCTION OF ALL OF SOCIAL SERVICES AND GOVERNMENT SAFETY NETS. Because the system simply cannot support it.

And that's exactly what the conservatives want.

[Le Taz Hot]

33. Woah! Dude!

It was a joke. Didn't you see the "sarcasm" icon? Jeesus! Take a chill pill already. Joke. Laughter. Ha ha??? Ah, fuck it.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

6. Last I checked...

something like 75% approved of amnesty.

[Deep13]

12. With whom did you check? nt

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

14. DU.

From a poll, posted here a couple of days ago.

[MercutioATC]

18. You DO realize that we're a little on the liberal side, don't you?

DU doesn't come CLOSE to representing the will of the general population on most issues.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

20. Well duh.

It wasn't a "DU poll." It was a national, scientific poll, reported on DU.

[MercutioATC]

27. Ah, I hadn't seen that here.

Frankly, I hadn't even seen a DU poll that gave 70% support to illegal immigrants...

[MercutioATC]

7. I like how they claim to protest in support of "immigrant rights".

What they're actually supporting is rights for illegal immigrants.

Gee, maybe that's why they only have 24% approval...

[Triana]

9. "What they're actually supporting is rights for illegal immigrants."

...and this is why I cannot support this. We don't like that Rush Limbaugh was let off for breaking the law, but it's OK if illegal immigrants do it and we should let them? Support them? I don't think so. Laws are SUPPOSED to apply equally for everyone. Ooooh. I know that's being a Pollyanna, but I can't get behind something that advocates lawbreaking for SOME people (while others' lives, country, economy, etc, are affected negatively by said lawbreakers).

Don't think so. I'm ok with LEGAL immigrants. Not illegal ones, and I see these protests as supporting rights for illegals. Can't do it.

[MercutioATC]

16. Exactly. I support an enforced minimum wage...I support social programs

and worker protections for Americans and legal immigrants...

...but none of those issues have to do with illegal immigration, and it's disingenuous on the part of these protesters to suggest they do. A progressive can, without any ethical conflict, support workers' rights while condemning illegal immigration.

[Triana]

21. Amen!!

"A progressive can, without any ethical conflict, support workers' rights while condemning illegal immigration."

[TriMetFan]

39. Shame on you.

The one that you should be pissed off at are not the illegal immigrants, BUT the corporations that keep hiring them and at times bring then here! Demand that our Government start fining the shit out of the companies that do the hiring! But that would be to easy. It's a lot easier to blame the brown person right?

[prolesunited]

10. Yes, it's all the people's fault

WTF about the companies who are behind all of this, the ones who actively RECRUIT illegals.

The illegals are a symptom. The corporate culture and the government that enables it is the DISEASE.

Why don't you go after the right target? Or, would you have gone after the slaves, too, and let the slave owners and slave traders get off with hardly a slap on the wrist.

[Deep13]

13. The question was only directed to those poll results, ...

...not all the other aspects of illegal immigration. I'm all for penalizing those who profit from illegal conduct. Seems like this falls under RICO's forfeiture provisions.

[Sparkman]

3. "likely voters" ignores the disenfranchised, those among us left behind.

What you do to the least of mine, you do to me also.
Jesus Christ, circa 0032.
Ever wonder why the U.S. looks like a fat dumb society to the rest of the world?

[Deep13]

17. Sorry for putting it this way, but...

..."likely voters" refers to those people who actually matter to the formation of public policy. With only three exceptions, we have universal sufferage in this country. (The exceptions are certain felons, children and foreigners.) I do know why America looks the way it looks in the world, and counting those who do not vote will not change it.

[Sparkman]

37. Tell that to Richard Nixon, impeached by the most "unlikely of voters"ha !

[Deep13]

40. I thought he resigned.

The House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach. They are hardly the most unlikely voters.

[Sparkman]

42. WHERE do you attribute the pressure to impeach, & to resign? Street protes

tors

[pscot]

8. I'm a die-hard Liberal on most issues

But on this one I'm with Tom Tancredo. Legal immigration,yes. Line jumpers, no. A tolerance policy that allows people to violate selected laws as they choose, ultimately corrupts the rule of law and the larger society.

[El Fuego]

15. Very well said.

[riona]

26. I agree

Just because someone is "liberal" doesn't mean they champion illegal activities. Also there are those who assume we do - mainly because the right wing knows that slapping the word "liberal" on an issue always hits a sensitive spot with their base. You know the drill - "tax and spend liberal", "bleeding-heart liberal," "tree hugging liberal" etc.

[mshasta]

19. only when they need the hispanic vote...

they will support the Hispanics...

[Deep13]

22. Yes, or cheap labor. nt

[gratuitous]

25. Just shows that if you ask the right question . . .

You can get any answer you want, and Rasmussen carries water for the right wing as well as any poll in the country.

Because here's part of the longer question:

Thanks to the rapacious neo-liberal capitalistic practices of big money and large corporations, people in their own countries are being forced out of their homes and trades that they've occupied for centuries. I'll give you just two for instances:

Mexico used to have a thriving sugar industry. No fewer than 60 producers, employing many, many folks. Then Coca-Cola and Pepsi decided that sugaring their non-nutritional drinks was just too darned expensive, especially when the United States government so heavily subsidized the production of high fructose corn syrup. So Coke and Pepsi began undercutting Mexico's sugar industry, selling high fructose corn syrup as a food additive sweetener. Mexico now has zero (that's right, none) domestic sugar companies. Where do you suppose the sugar workers (cane cutters, transporters, refiners, packagers, etc.) went? What were they supposed to do?

Next, and this one's also from Mexico, the Mexican government, under big pressure from Nestle, granted a license to a Vietnamese coffee firm to import coffee. At first blush, it looked like a truly coals-to-Newcastle move, as Mexico has never imported so much as a coffee bean, let alone grant a foreign grower a license to import coffee. The domestic price that coffee brokers were willing to pay slumped from two pesos a kilo to a peso thirty, then 80 centavos a kilo.

Did the Vietnamese company bring in any coffee? It did not. But the threat of cheaper Vietnamese coffee spooked the Mexican brokers, who were unwilling to offer their countrymen a decent price for coffee because of the chance that cheaper Vietnamese coffee might flood the Mexican market. Unable to make a living anymore growing coffee, what are the growers supposed to do? And the pickers who harvest the crop. And the drivers who bring it to the roasters. And the roasters and the blenders who make the market-ready product? Where do they go? What do they do?

Now, multiply these rapacious practices by the thousands in dozens of countries by other large corporations in concert with corrupt governmental officials who are lining their own pockets with kickbacks from the profits, and what possible alternative does a poor, uneducated peasant from the Mexican countryside have?

In addition to these problems, there are corrupt governmental officials, apartheid-type policies, death squads, civil insurrection, oppression and the whole panoply of problems that have been going on in these countries for decades. It would require leadership from our country, cooperation with other nations, giving large corporations like Coca-Cola and Nestle the raspberry, and a willingness on the part of the American public to pay a few more shekels for its lettuce or its coffee. All of which are in remarkably short supply.

But until we're willing to address some of these difficulties, people will continue to leave their homes and their families and risk their lives to come to the United States so they can scratch out a living. They can't do it where they live now, and it's partly our fault for our addiction to cheap goods from foreign manufacturers, our support of short-sighted xenophobic political leaders, and our desire for easy unidimensional answers to difficult questions that integrate several dimensions of our modern lives.

But if you ask the question ju-u-u-u-u-ust right, the entire fault lands on the victims of our country's economic policies. Now that's hard work!

[The Magistrate]

28. Generaslly, Sir, People Do Not Like Protest Demostrations

This is often true even if they agree with the point being pressed. They view the things as disruptive and unruly, and hence bad things at bottom.

But the real point and value of these crowds has nothing to do with cnvincing the populace at large. These crowds are serving physical notice the immigrant community is against the Republican Party, and is mobilizing to act on this distaste in November. Very few people who are not immigrants will decide their votes over this single issue; those in these crowds, and in the community they stem from, will.

[Deep13]

29. Respectfully disagree.

Like abortion, gun control and gay marriage, illegal immigration is an emotional hot-button issue for a lot of people who are not necessarily affected by it.

[mitchtv]

32. Non immigrant Latinos are enraged at becoming a "wedge issue"

Attack the immigrant programs in Catholic Charities, is likely to cost the pukes a usually republican voting middle class Latinos, permanently.
'Cause Americans or not, you get "treated" like a Mexican.

[Tiggeroshii]

34. Yeah

[Tiggeroshii]

35. DU Poll

Reflective of the big picture as well(as less than half of us seem to support the boycott in general).

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2600547&mesg_id=2601345

[RebelOne]

41. I do not support the boycott. 'Nuff said.

[BigYawn]

36. Illegal immigrant labor will be the last nail in the coffin for

labor unions, who should be protesting LOUDLY
against illegal import of cheap labor.