Seeking -- or Drawing -- the Face of "Immigrant Rights" Marchers?

Source: Chicago Tribune

Survey: Most in rally citizens
UIC researchers seek image of May 1 marchers

By Oscar AvilaTribune staff reporterJuly 18, 2006

Days before yet another march for more lenient immigration laws, researchers Monday put a clearer face on the masses who took to Chicago streets this spring.

The typical marcher was a naturalized U.S. citizen from Mexico who speaks two languages, works in a low-wage job and was getting involved in politics for the first time, according to a survey by researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

UIC researchers interviewed 400+ marchers at the May 1st rally here in Chicago.

According to the survey, nearly three-fourths of marchers were U.S. citizens. Although 57 percent of respondents were born abroad, the vast majority had become U.S. citizens through naturalization.

More than two-thirds of those citizens voted in the last election."This conveys that there is political power here," said Nilda Flores-Gonzalez, a UIC professor and one of the study's principal investigators. "These marches are showing people that they do matter, that they can exert pressure."

Although activists seeking amnesty, legalization, and an end to deportation (I wasn't aware it had actually started) are quick to latch onto the findings, even those who conducted the survey acknowledge its flaws.

Flores-Gonzalez acknowledged that the U.S. citizen responses might be inflated because as many as 20 percent of UIC staff who conducted the survey spoke only English and could not interview respondents who didn't speak the language. Those respondents likely were not U.S. citizens, she said.

Also, because the May 1 rally happened just days after a high-profile raid by the Department of Homeland Security against illegal immigrants in Chicago, some respondents might have said they were U.S. citizens out of fear, Flores-Gonzalez said.

I guess we're just supposed to believe the figures without question, since UIC and the open borders crowd really, really, really want to use them. If we had an unbiased media, this "information" wouldn't have seen the light of day in a major publication. But we don't have an unbiased media -- we've got The Chicago Tribune and its ilk -- and they are desperate to paint the picture they want to see.

Me, I prefer my statistical data to be based a little less on "art" and a lot more on science.

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