We’re split. ¿What else is new?

It seems I’m in the “28 percent” grouping.

The Pew Hispanic Center came out with a study this week concerning what the growing Latino population really thinks about immigration, and it seems that our thoughts are all over the place on the issue.

IT SEEMS THAT 13 percent of Latinos are inclined to think in ways that would make the conservative ideologues completely happy – they’re willing to see deportations of the 11.1 million people now living in this country without citizenship or a valid visa.

There is another 53 percent of Latinos who have no problem with those 11.1 million being fined (similar to a traffic ticket), but they don’t want to see deportations.

Another 28 percent think that any focus on penalties misses the point – there really was no reason the bulk of the “undocumented” shouldn’t have been able to get papers in the first place, except for a bureaucratic mess that complicates the situation.

We think that punishment is not the point. We ought to be focusing on figuring out which of the 11.1 million can make a worthwhile contribution to our society, and fix the paperwork situation so they can come out of society’s shadows and live in the open.

THAT IS A plus for everybody, even though some of us don’t fully appreciate it.

I’d even include the 13 percent of Latinos who are willing to support deportations in that latter category. They seem so eager to be seen as part of the pack, as defined by people with a warped definition of what the “pack” is that they’re willing to sell out their ethnic brethren.

Personally, I view the situation as one where I realize there are people who are either too ideological or too stupid to be able to differentiate among Latinos born in the U.S., those with visas and those without. Some want to believe that even the ones with visas shouldn’t have them.

That is why I see it being in my interests to stick up for the legal rights of the undocumented, a significant share of whom are of Latin American ethnic backgrounds not because of any degenerate characteristic but because of the proximity of those nations to the United States.

SERIOUSLY, SOMEONE WHO is Croatian who is in this country without a visa probably did something more underhanded to get into this country or to remain here than anyone who is of a Latin American background. His (or her) “crime,” so to speak, is mere existence.

Now I do notice that the biggest group of Latinos on this issue are the ones willing to support a “fine” of some sort for the people who committed the civil violation of being a non-citizen without papers within the boundaries of this country.

In theory, I don’t have a problem with the issue. It is in practice that I worry about it, because I wonder if political people whose true desire is to reduce the number of foreigners they consider “undesirable’ are going to construct a system filled with so many glitches that it is meant to “catch” people in the act of screwing up.

Then, the violation of that glitch becomes some sort of criminal offense that is used as justification for taking harsher legal action against nuestros hermanos. If I reads like I’m writing that I don’t fully trust the motivations of the people who would set up the system, you’d be correct.

MY SKEPTICISM DRIVES me into the place that I’m in, which is to say that many of these people are working harder (and for less money) than any human being should have to.

Which is why I’m also a “29 percent”-er – the share of Latinos who think immigrants provide a positive influence on our nation. Another 31 percent are saying it’s negative (some people are just too anxious to mix in) while 30 percent think it makes no difference.

Of course, my favorite statistic in this study is 6 percent. That is the total of Latinos who “don’t know” or “refused” to say what should be done with undocumented individuals living in this country.

In all likelihood, they’re the ones who wish we’d all shut up about this boring public policy talk so we could focus attention on Shakira’s jiggling hips.

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