North Carolinans aren’t setting out the welcome mat for immigrants
November 24, 2003
Despite having the nation’s fastest-growing immigrant population in the 1990s, many North Carolinians would be happy to see the newcomers go home.
The state's foreign-born population jumped 274 percent in the 1990s, according to the 2000 Census. More recent census estimates indicate that the flow of immigration has continued, with Latinos, including many from Mexico, making up the majority of the state's 480,000 foreign-born residents.
A large majority of North Carolinians think the United States admits too many legal immigrants, according to a new poll. About the same number think Mexicans who came here illegally for work should not be allowed to remain, even if they are otherwise law-abiding.
The poll confirmed what many undocumented workers know.
"Americans think that we come here to take away what belongs to them,"
said Jose Martinez, who left Mexico five years ago. "But we're just here
to look for decent jobs -- something we can't find in our own country."
Martinez, 25, quit his job this year as a meat cutter at a hog slaughtering
plant because of what he described as horrible working conditions. He now works
odd jobs and lives in Lumberton.
The census did not collect data on whether the immigrants entered the country legally, but a wealth of evidence from law enforcement agencies and other sources indicates that many did not, and that a large percentage of the undocumented immigrants are from Mexico.
Asked one young man "Even though they're obeying the laws, they broke one to begin with, so why should they be able to stay?". He was among 600 North Carolinians questioned last week in the poll conducted by Maryland-based Research 2000.
Legal immigration to the United States climbed from 798,000 in 1997 to 1,064,000 in 2002, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. During the same period, annual legal immigration to North Carolina grew from 6,000 to 13,000.
The survey included two questions about immigration. Asked about the level of legal immigration, 74 percent said it was too high. Asked whether illegal Mexican workers who otherwise abide by the law should be allowed to remain in the United States, 73 percent said no. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Some attribute the anti-immigration sentiment to the state's bleak jobs market. North Carolina's unemployment rate has been among the nation's highest for much of the year, though it dropped to 6.1 percent in October, close to the national average.
Some frustration has reached Congress. Lawmakers are considering legislation
to urge local law enforcement officers to arrest illegal immigrants; at the
same time, other bills would legalize the status of hundreds of thousands of
high school students and farmworkers who entered the country illegally.
North Carolinians' opinions about immigration are not unusual.
In the summer of 2002, a nationwide survey of 2,862 people found that 70 percent believed controlling or reducing illegal immigration should be a very important goal of government. The poll by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations also found that 55 percent of respondents favored cutting the number of legal immigrants allowed into the country.
A Zogby International poll in February 2002 showed that 63 percent of Americans would support stopping all immigration from countries suspected of harboring terrorists. The numbers were only slightly lower when respondents were asked about immigrants from other parts of the world.