Opinion> Miguel Perez> Just How Important Is Inmigracion

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Just How Important Is 'Inmigración'?

As if politicians needed any more excuses for ignoring one of the country's most pressing issues, a new poll says immigration reform "appears to have receded in importance among Latinos."

Immigrant rights advocates are building a new, huge movement to pressure the larger Democratic majority in Congress and the Obama administration to finally fix the nation's broken immigration system and provide a path to the legalization of the 12 million mostly Hispanic illegal immigrants already living in this country. But the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center says that "only" 31 percent of Latinos recently surveyed considered immigration to be "extremely important."

That could be read by some legislators and Obama advisers as a pass for copping out. They could see it as an excuse for putting immigration on the back burner.

Of course, it would not be a valid excuse, especially considering that in the same survey, 75 percent of Latinos said the issue should be at least "very important," and 88 percent said it should be at least an "important" priority for the Obama administration.

The way some surveys are presented (for the sake of attacking headlines) and they way we report on them (for the sake of making headlines) can be very misleading and detrimental.

Based on the way the survey results were presented, the media made it seem as if there were no need to rush to fix our immigration problems because Latinos are now much more concerned about the dire state of the U.S. economy. One prominent newspaper actually noted that Hispanics "do not believe" immigration should be at the top of the priority list for the new administration.

Incredibly, these conclusions are based on the semantic difference between those who said immigration is "important" or "very important" and those who said it is "extremely important."

Surely, like most Americans, Latinos are increasingly concerned about the state of the economy.

In fact, they have even more reason to worry than the average American because Latinos are among those who have been hit hardest by the mortgage crisis, the slump in construction, and the rising unemployment rate.

But to assume that they are less interested in immigration because they are worried about the economy is not only misleading but also absurd!

Yet you can bet there will be politicians who will use this study to argue that because Latinos ranked immigration as the sixth-most important issue in Pew's list of priorities — behind the economy, education, health care, national security and the environment — promises made by Democrats about reforming immigration during the first year of the Obama administration can be at least postponed and perhaps completely ignored.

That would be a humongous mistake. Of course Latinos also are concerned about education, health care, national security and the environment — just like most Americans. In fact, in past Pew surveys, Latinos have ranked those issues above immigration.

But there are many other issues that are of unique interest to Latinos, and among those issues, you wouldn't need a poll to know that immigration would be their top priority. If the Democrats don't deliver on this issue by the 2010 elections, some may lose their jobs.

In reality, the percentage of Latinos who considered immigration "extremely important" is only 7 points lower than the percentage of Latinos (38 percent) who felt that way in another Pew survey, in December 2007.

But just for the sake of argument, let's ignore the 75 percent of Latinos who said immigration is at least "very important" and the 88 percent who said it is "important." Let's just take that 31 percent who said immigration should be an "extremely important" issue for the Obama administration. Surely, they will hold Obama and the new Congress accountable on this issue.

Here's another way to read the same survey: Can Democrats win re-election in 2010 and 2012 if they lose "only" 31 percent of the Hispanic vote?

To find out more about Miguel Perez and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.