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Seven in 10 people in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties would like to make it more difficult for undocumented immigrants to find jobs, according to a UCSB survey released Wednesday.
But a majority also favors finding ways to get undocumented immigrants already living in the Central Coast on the path to legal citizenship, the survey found.  Graphic by Andrea Huebner / SBN
“This has been an area that has had a lot of immigrants, illegal and undocumented, for a long time – it’s not some abstract concept for people,” said UCSB economics professor Jon Sonstelie, who directed the second annual “Central Coast Survey" by the university's Social Science Survey Center. “They deal with people all the time where they are not sure if they are here legally or not."
In addition to immigration, the survey, which was based on about 1,000 Central Coast phone interviews during January and February, provided a glimpse into people’s views on traffic congestion, population growth and general satisfaction with life.
Most people in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties prefer mass transit to highway expansion as a means to alleviate traffic congestion, the report found. They also favor limiting housing development over limiting business growth as a way to avoid a population boom.
The survey says that in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, 73 percent of people are generally satisfied with life – compared to just 58 percent nationwide.
But the most intriguing results centered on the hot-button topic of immigration. The survey found, for instance, that a slight majority of Central Coast residents are against allowing illegal immigrants to obtain a driver’s license. And, according to the poll, Central Coast residents generally do not want to see an increase in immigration, illegal or legal. (Forty-one percent believe the current level of immigration should be maintained, and a quarter believe it should be decreased.)
Summing up his interpretation of the results, Sonstelie said: “It’s really, ‘If you’re here now, and you don’t have legal status, we’d like to take care of that situation. But we really don’t favor more immigration.' "
Views varied sharply according to race. (About 65 percent of the respondents described themselves as white; a quarter, Latino.)
For instance, 81 percent of the Latino respondents – and only 27 percent of whites – think it is OK for undocumented immigrants to obtain a drivers license. And 92 percent of Latinos – and just 63 percent of whites – support taking measures to put undocumented immigrants on the path to legal citizenry.
Only one question bucked this trend. On whether illegal immigrants place a burden on public services such as health care and education, Latinos and whites agree -- over 70 percent of both groups said yes.
Attitudes also varied along partisan lines. In general, Democrats – who constituted 36 percent of the survey takers – favored leniency toward immigrants, while the 27 percent of respondents who said they were Republicans tended to express more hard-line views. Twenty-three percent of the interviewees identified themselves as Independents.
(Statewide, 43 percent of voters are Democrats, and 34 percent are Republicans, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.)
The study was jointly funded by UCSB and Santa Barbara Bank & Trust. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points, with a confidence level of 95 percent.
Other interesting findings:- Of the 40 percent who believe population growth is a major problem, about half said they’d like to rein it in by limiting the number of new businesses. Eight in 10 said they prefer limiting the number of new houses. - 41 percent of Latino households have more than two adults, compared to 20 percent of white households. - 69 percent of Latino households have at least one child, compared to 35 percent of white households. - Over 80 percent of all respondents are involved in at least one local organization, such as a religious group or PTA. - A plurality – 46 percent -- of the respondents were at least 20-year residents, compared to just 3 percent who had only been in the area for a year. - Of the roughly 1,600 households that were called, about 1,000 took the survey, a participation rate of 62 percent. - 72 percent of the Ventura County interviewees – and 63 percent of Santa Barbara County respondents -- said the U.S. should prohibit undocumented immigrants from working by having employers require valid social security numbers. - About 10 percent of the respondents preferred to do the interview in Spanish. |
