Immigration: Up vs. Down, Not Republican vs. Democrat

By Mark Krikorian on February 19, 2015

CIS Legal Policy Analyst Jon Feere appeared on C-SPAN's Washington Journal this morning opposite Crystal Williams of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and what struck me was the callers.

C-SPAN offers three call-in numbers, for Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, and I'd guess on issues like taxes or guns or abortion that yields a variety of views. But whatever you might think from watching the Senate battle over funding of Obama's lawless amnesty decrees — where every Democrat has been voting for amnesty and against enforcement — out in the real world support for enforcing our immigration laws is not a partisan issue. So whatever phone line people use to call in to C-SPAN, my experience from being on the show has been that most callers are pro-enforcement.

On today's show every caller was pro-enforcement (except one who was off-topic and another who was unintelligible). Some samples:

A Black American Democrat from Los Angeles:

If you want to see how negative the impact of illegal immigration has been on a community, come to Los Angeles. The black community has been pretty much overrun by illegals.... I've been a Democrat all my life but I'm seriously considering becoming an independent if the trend continues in the Democratic party the way it's going and I know a lot of other African Americans who feel the same way.... I listen to C-SPAN every day and I hear African Americans calling in complaining about illegal immigration, and it seems to be that it’s falling on deaf ears.

An African immigrant calling in to the Independents line:

I used to be a Democrat but I’m very disappointed by the Democrat party....When the president said more than 20 times that it wasn't his constitutional prerogative to give amnesty to the illegals, and all of the sudden he changed, it makes me really think that he’s not enforcing the Constitution that he was elected to enforce....The president is also saying they cannot enforce the border....Let's just imagine that right now we gave [garbled] to all the illegals, and one year later we have the same problem because our border is not secure. What will we have achieved? I think the border should be secured first. We are the United States of America — we send people on the Moon, we have the most powerful military in the world and you are telling me that we cannot enforce our own border?

A Democratic woman from Georgia:

I still work at 77 to pay my insurance and when these people [illegal aliens] go to a hospital and they don’t have insurance I feel like they are charging me extra if I go to a hospital to pay for these people that don’t have insurance.

A Black American from Miami on the Republican line:

It's already hard enough to find a job...now Obama and you guys are trying to legalize people to come here to take jobs that we need....You guys are more concerned about the illegal aliens, people from other countries, than you are about your own citizens, and that's concerning....What are you guys trying to do, destroy the foundations of our country?

An Independent from Ohio:

Why is it more important to protect illegal aliens than innocent Americans by not going ahead and just passing the budget and stopping the executive action of the president? Another Democratic woman: These people are committing felonies and so are their employers.

C-SPAN callers may not be a cross-section of Americans in general, but they are probably a pretty good sampling of likely voters. Republican (and Democratic) presidential hopefuls might want to take notice.

Topics: Politics