A few more facts to clear up some misconceptions:

- Undocumented immigrants are not entitled to most health, social service, and economic benefits in programs such as MediCal, welfare, unemployment insurance,and disability payments. Some restrictions on these programs apply to legal immigrants as well.

Undocumented immigrants can recieve medical care, without insurance, via federal government mandated regulations

- The Pew Hispanic Center survey was conducted by telephone from October 3 through November 9, 2007 among a randomly-selected, nationally-representative sample of 2,003 Hispanic adults (with a margin of error of plus/minus 2.7 percentage points).

The survey finds that Hispanics oppose immigration enforcement measures, often by lopsided margins. Three quarters (75%) disapprove of workplace raids; some 79% prefer that local police not take an active role in identifying illegal immigrants; and some 55% disapprove of states checking for immigration status before issuing driver's licenses.

By contrast, non-Hispanics are much more supportive of all these policies, with a slight majority favoring workplace raids and a heavy majority favoring driver's license checks.

The survey finds less pronounced--but still significant--gaps within the Hispanic community on a range of matters, from perceptions about discrimination to attitudes about illegal immigration to support for tougher enforcement measures.

For example, on questions about enforcement policies, native-born Hispanics take positions that are closer to those of the rest of the U.S. population than do foreign-born Hispanics. Also, the native born are less likely than the foreign born to report a negative personal impact from the heightened attention to immigration issues.

Likewise, Hispanics who are not citizens feel much more vulnerable in the current environment than do Hispanics who are citizens. They are about twice as likely as Hispanic citizens to worry about deportation and to feel a specific negative personal impact from the heightened attention to illegal immigration. (Non-citizens account for 44% of the total adult Hispanic population. Of these non-citizen Latino adults, an estimated 55% are undocumented immigrants and the other 45% are legal aliens).

Whatever new vulnerability Hispanics feel in the present political and policy environment, the survey finds little evidence of a backlash against illegal immigration by Hispanics themselves. To the contrary, Hispanics generally see illegal immigrants as a plus – both for the Latino community itself and for the U.S. economy in general. Here, too, there are differences by nativity – with the foreign born significantly more positive than the native born in their views about the effects of illegal immigration. But even the native born are more positive than negative. And, as they assess the impact of illegal immigrants on the economy, native-born Latinos are more inclined to see a positive impact now (64%) than they were five years ago, when just 54% said the impact was positive.


.