Latinos:We’re Not Quite Who They Think We Are

Ryan Enos makes an interesting point in his YouGov blog.

According to the Pew Hispanic Center there are approximately 11.2 million undocumented workers in the United states; roughly 4 percent of the population.

But if you ask the average, often polled, American the perception is incredibly warped. “The average response,” Enos writes, “when asked what percent of their state is illegal immigrants was just over 17% – that is, the average American thinks almost 1 in 5 people are illegal immigrants.”

No wonder they’ve gone ape shot!

It may have something to do with the fact that they think we all look alike. Ya think?

It also underlines why Latinos in general are against discriminatory laws like Arizona’s sb1070. Latinos know, intuitively and without the need of a poll or blog-analisys, that when people see Latino they assume undocumented.

Enos, of course, takes his analysis one step further: “Statistical analysis that controls for other factors, indicates that people that describe themselves as politically “very conservative”, rather than “moderate” think that an additional 13 percentage points of illegal immigrants live in their state. Of course, the causal direction is difficult to sort out here – do political conservatives believe that they are surrounded by illegal immigrants because they are political conservatives or are they political conservatives because they believe that they are surrounded by illegal immigrants?”

Chew on that for a while. And think about this. If there are five people in an elevator, and one of them is Latino, which is the undocumented worker?