How knowledgable are we about immigration issue?

President Barack Obama is going around making statements this week saying he’s now not sure anything can be accomplished during 2010 on the issue of immigration reform, while Rep. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., is claiming that just because he pulled his support from talks on the issue (thereby killing any chance of true bipartisan cooperation) doesn’t mean he should get the blame for the issue’s failure to advance.

Meanwhile, many other political people are stumbling about trying to figure out how they can avoid doing anything meaningful on the issue, while appearing not to be obstructionist in their actions.

IN SHORT, THERE is going to be a lot of material for the activists to be upset about when they hold their protest marches and rallies on Saturday, and countless priests and other clergy conduct prayer vigils and special services on Sunday will be able to vent their rage.

And as for the masses in our society? They’re confused what to think.

If there is one positive element to the activity in the past week in Arizona, it is that the ugliness of the opposition mentality to legitimate immigration reform has been exposed. Only the biggest lunkhead could ignore it.

Yet I’m wondering if some people are determined to do just that.

THE GALLUP ORGANIZATION came out with a new poll on Thursday – one conducted this week that the backers of Arizona’s absurd actions will claim to be sympathetic to their warped views.

One way of reading the poll is that 51 percent of the people surveyed favor what Arizona did, while 39 percent oppose it. The part that scares me? Another 11 percent have “no opinion” on the issue.

Of course, the reason I imply that such results are skewed is that they are the figures for people who claim to have heard a great deal of information about what happened in Arizona (Gallup admits it did not try to figure out if these people correctly comprehend the bill).

Overall among all people surveyed, 39 percent favor it, with 30 percent opposing it and another 31 percent having “no opinion” or not having heard anything about the issue.

ONE CAN ARGUE that with only 39 percent of all people surveyed and such a large “no opinion,” there is significant room for opinion to be swayed as the realities of this new law set to take effect some time in September become known.

But what scares me is the fact that of people who like to think they understand the issue, 11 percent had “no opinion.” That just strikes me as a significant chunk of the population (about one of every nine people) going out of their way to remain clueless.

Big surprise here. This issue is coming down along political partisan lines. Most Democrats are inclined to think Arizona screwed up, while most Republicans want to believe that Arizona did good last week when Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law the measure that requires local police to take stronger actions to enforce federal immigration laws.

Gallup throws the implication into its study that people considering a legal challenge to Arizona might want to reconsider on the grounds that they might not have strong public support. Then again, the law is supposed to be above public opinion. There are times when it is supposed to defend things that some segments of our society desperately wish to do away with.

IN SOME CASES, there are people who would view the growing Latino population of our nation as something falling into that category.

Which is why many Latinos are going to take up this issue – regardless of whether or not we or our families have already attained U.S. citizenship.

The Pew Hispanic Center released its own study Thursday, one meant to view data compiled for its own recent polls within the framework of what happened in Arizona.

U.S. residents as a whole see Latinos as the most-discriminated ethnic or racial group in this country, compared to almost a decade earlier when African-American people were the ones that fell into that category.

FIFTY-SEVEN PERCENT of Latinos think that either they, or someone they know, will face deportatino, while 9 percent of Latinos say that they have been questioned about their immigration status.

Then, there is the statistic that catches my eye – 81 percent of Latinos think that local police have no business getting involved with immigration law enforcement, compared to 49 percent of the population as a whole.

My own belief about the Arizona political actions is based largely on the fact that I fully comprehend how offended local government types everywhere get when they think the federal government is meddling in their local affairs.

No one can seriously say that national citizenship and its implications on foreign policy is something that a state or local official is in any way qualified to address.

IT MAKES ME wonder if Latinos have a better understanding than the population at-large of the divisions between our differing types of government and the importance of maintaining those divisions, and if part of the solution to our nation’s problems is to have more Latinos in positions of authority.

We certainly couldn’t do any worse than the political knuckleheads currently in charge.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Of the roughly 2 million Latinos living in Arizona in 2008, about two-thirds of them were born in the United States. Of the roughly 500,000 Arizona residents who have immigration issues, about 94 percent of them are believed to be citizens of Mexico.