Chris Hayes Explains What Conservative Guest Gets Wrong About Hispanic Support For Immigration Reform

MSNBC's Chris Hayes Debunked The Myth That Latinos Do Not Support Immigration Reform That Was Pushed By Conservative Columnist A.J. Delgado

On the November 3 edition of MSNBC's All In With Chris Hayes, host Chris Hayes accurately pushed back on conservative columnist A.J. Delgado's faulty depiction of the Hispanic voting bloc. Delgado said that “two out of three Latinos want less immigration” to base her assertion that it is a “big myth” that Latinos stand “in favor of immigration reform.”

Hayes promptly corrected Delgado's misleading argument by noting that comprehensive immigration reform is widely supported among Latinos, accurately stating that “wanting less immigration is a very different thing than actually supporting” immigration reform (emphasis added):

CHRIS HAYES: Well, this is the thing, right? Obviously, Latino voters are not single-issue voters, on immigration. In fact, there's long been the idea that “if we can get over the immigration issue then we can win them,” on the GOP side. On the flip-side of that, A.J., is that there are a lot of single-issue immigration voters in the Republican primary. That is something that I think a lot of folks continue to not get their head around. Like these people who care about immigration first who want the wall, who like Donald Trump on this, they're serious. They're going to vote on this issue.

A.J. DELGADO: And many of them are Latinos. Like me. That's the big myth is people assume if you're Latino, you're in favor of immigration reform, you're against the border and you're against border security. It's not true. A Gallup poll showed just a couple of months ago that two out of three Latinos want less immigration. You also see in Florida, Trump is beating by more than twice the support both Rubio and Jeb -- who are both pro-immigration reform -- with Latino voters. So the myth has been completely debunked, that Latinos that are here are somehow all pro-immigration reform and that that's their top issue. It's simply not true. We're like every other American, it's not our top issue, jobs, the economy, education, health care are.

HAYES: Just a quick empirical interjection here. The polling on comprehensive immigration reform does show wide margins of Latino supporting reliably.

DELGADO: Among Republicans thought?

HAYES: No, no, Latinos generally as a voting bloc, Latinos in this country, widely support in poll after poll after poll a pathway to citizenship. That is a polling fact about Latino voters in the country. That said, millions of people--

DELGADO: I dispute that though, two out of three in the Gallup poll, and this wasn't just Republicans, want less immigration.

HAYES: But that's a very different thing. Wanting less immigration is a very different thing than actually supporting comprehensive reform.

As Hayes correctly points out, polling consistently indicates that a majority of Hispanics support immigration reform. A 2014 Pew poll showed 66 percent of Latino registered voters consider it's either extremely or very important that “significant immigration reform” is passed. Moreover, an August 12 poll from Gallup revealed 77 percent of Hispanics are in favor of a pathway to citizenship. A similar sentiment is echoed by the general population: an October 8 survey by Pew demonstrates that 74 percent of the U.S. population supports a policy that would allow undocumented immigrants to stay in the country legally.

Delgado is apparently misinterpreting an August 10 Gallup poll to claim that “two out of three Latinos want less immigration.” The poll actually found that most Hispanics believe U.S. immigration should be increased or should remain at current levels, and only one out of three thought is should be decreased as Delgado claims. As explained by Gallup, “about a third say immigration should be kept at present levels, roughly another third voice a desire to see immigration levels increased and still another approximate third say immigration levels should be decreased.”