Posted on October 28, 2005

Progressive Indictment

Randall Burns, VDARE, October 27, 2005

VDARE.COM readers have seen repeatedly that there is a big gap between how political leaders vote on immigration—and what the public wants.

But how does this gap differ among ethnic various groups?

Recently, a reader forwarded me this article and another from the website MajorityRights.com using Americans for Better Immigration [ABI]’s grading system to demonstrate that Congressmen of different ethnicities voted significantly differently on immigration:

White Jews Hispanics Blacks
A 51
B 120 1 2 1
C 61
D 59 9 1 13
F 48 14 21 26
Total 339 24 24 40

Grades from Americans for Better Immigration

Now, the some of the folks at MajorityRights were using this to suggest that “the problem” with US immigration policy is that specific ethnic groups were voting differently than whites (that is, non-Jewish whites) were.

And there is indeed clearly a substantial systematic difference in how Black, Jewish and Hispanic congressmen vote on immigration compared to how White congressmen vote.

Still, is this really a reflection of how Black, Jewish and Hispanic voters in fact feel?

Polls cited by the Center for Immigration Studies show there is a real systematic difference between elite and popular opinion on immigration. And poll data from FAIR breaks out this elite-popular division by ethnicity:

Answer to FAIR’s question: Do you want less immigration?

Whites Jews Hispanics Blacks
People 84% 49% 42% 44%
Political* Leaders 50% 4% 8% 2%
Ratio .59 .08 .19 .045

*Grades B or A were taken as indicative of wanting less immigration-this may be an overly generous assumption.

 

What these polls suggest is that Black, Hispanic and Jewish congressmen are even more different from Black, Hispanic and Jewish voters than white congressmen are from white voters.

Who, then, are those congressmen representing—if not the voters?

Recently a colleague and I created a tool that measures the average Americans for Better Immigration voting record of the politicians to whom any specific individual donates—using the records available at open secrets.org.

My colleague is an H-1b casualty who needed help with his rent that month. The project cost a tiny fraction what any H-1b intensive shop would have charged.

One of the first things we used this tool for was to see how the congressional recipients of donations from the 20 richest Americans in 2001 voted on immigration issues.

 

Rank

 

Name

 

Net worth

 

 

(millons)

 

Age

 

ABI grade of donation Recipients

1 Gates, William H. III 54,000 45 47.77
2 Buffett, Warren Edward 33,200 71 31
3 Allen, Paul Gardner 28,200 48 28.25
4 Ellison, Lawrence Joseph 21,900 57 38
5 Walton, Alice L. 17,500 52 62
5 Walton, Helen R. 17,500 82 66.91
5 Walton, Jim C. 17,500 53 66.81
5 Walton, John T. 17,500 55 77.61
9 Walton, S. Robson 17,500 57 62.1
10 Ballmer, Steven Anthony 15,100 45 42.19
11 Anthony, Barbara Cox 11,300 78 33.86
11 Chambers, Anne Cox 11,300 81 40.09
13 Kluge, John Werner 10,600 87 27.68
14 Redstone, Sumner M. 10,100 78 28.43
15 Dell, Michael 9,800 36 63.2
16 Anschutz, Philip F. 9,600 61 60
17 Johnson, Abigail 9,100 39 66.3
18 Mars, Forrest Edward Jr. 9,000 70 31
18 Mars, Jacqueline Badger 9,000 62 31
20 Mars, John Franklyn 9,000 65 ——
21 Murdoch, Keith Rupert 7,500 70 44
22 Ergen, Charles 7,100 48 40.9
23 Soros, George 6,900 71 33.41
24 Bronfman, Edgar M. Sr. 6,800 72 41.33
25 Turner, Robert E. (Ted) 6,200 62 22

Of course, these donations are fairly small. But they do give some idea how attitudes of the very rich differ from the attitudes of the general public:

The average ABI rating of a congressional recipient of funds from one of the twenty richest Americans is 45.6. The congressional ABI average is 50.

In other words, the rich systematically favor politicians who are pro-immigration—even by the standards of an immigration-friendly Congress. (Even an ABI rating of 75 is arguably not really going to accomplish the goal of less overall immigration that is desired by the average American)

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