BCT Editorial – 6/11/06

This page was last updated on June 13, 2006.

Puzzling; Editorial; Beaver County Times; June 11, 2006.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“Americans might not like immigrants, especially illegals, but they don’t question their work ethic.”

[RWC] “Americans might not like immigrants?” Where did this come from? This is part of the Times on again/off again effort to conflate illegal aliens with legal immigrants.

“The most recent AP-Ipsos poll found that 52 percent of Americans think immigrants are a good influence, while 46 percent think they are a bad influence.

“It’s another response when Americans were asked about immigrants’ work ethic. Fifty-one percent said that in general they thought immigrants work harder than people born here while only 5 percent responded that they did not work as hard. Another 43 percent said there was not much difference.

“The disparity between the 46 percent who see immigrants as a bad influence and the 5 percent who said immigrants don’t work as hard is puzzling. You’d think they’d be a lot closer.”

[RWC] We don’t know the wording of the questions so it’s hard to draw any conclusions. With so many news outlets treating “immigrant” and “illegal alien” as synonyms, however, it would not be surprising to get weird results even if the poll questions were appropriately worded.