This is surprising....should this be surprising?

Arizona Hispanics support provision of law requiring proof of status.

According to Hot Air, there is ambiguity in the poll, but that is a fair inference from it:

I’ve got a question mark in the headline because, insanely, Rasmussen didn’t refine his sample to isolate the data from Latinos. The racial demographics polled are white, black, and “other,” which presumably encompasses Latinos (30.1 percent of the state’s population as of 2008), Native Americans (4.9 percent), and Asians (2.5 percent). Here’s what he got when he asked respondents if they favor or oppose legislation that would let cops stop suspected illegals to check their immigration status. Click the image to enlarge.


Fully 70 percent overall support this part of the law, and given the fact that Latinos compose most of the “other” category, a majority of their demographic must be in favor too. A few caveats, though. One: Rasmussen polls likely voters, so this is obviously a sample of citizens. Other polls that use “adults” as their sample are bound to show sharply lower numbers since they’ll include some illegals too. Two: Notwithstanding the support for letting cops inquire, 53 percent overall say they’re either very or somewhat concerned that the law will lead to civil-rights violations. Among the “other” group, it’s 54 percent — but of that number, 40 percent say they’re very concerned and just 14 percent say somewhat. (Among all likely voters, that split is 23/30.) So yeah, it’s an issue, and if it starts happening, expect support to start crumbling.

Exit question: Why didn’t Rasmussen emphasize this in his write-up of the data? Is he saving that for tomorrow?

Update: Another worthy caveat from the comments: The sub-sample of Latino likely voters must be relatively small, which would mean a large margin of error. That might explain why Rasmussen didn’t flag it. Just flag this result now for comparison purposes, as there’ll be plenty of more extensive polling in the days ahead.

This may be surprising only to those of us who grow up in they dynamic of victim-group identity politics. It may be the case that Hispanic-Americans are surprisingly like other Americans and want to see the law enforced. After all, nothing leads to a total contempt for the law than that it go unenforced. Also, Arizona is sitting right on the border where all kinds of violence is flowing into Arizona proper. They may feel that the best way to keep that stuff from happening in their homes is to enforce the law.

On the other hand, if law enforcement begins to act like thumb-fingered thugs that attitude will quickly change.

We shall see.