Subcommandante Markos Moulitsas Zuniga - better known as "Kos" - offers "Comprehensive immigration reform favored by those most affected"; "those affected" refers to voters in Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and Florida. The post is a wrapper around a new poll from the New Democrat Network. You can download their PDF from here: dailykos.com/story/2008/9/18/141449/465/722/602353

Once again, Kos has selected a useless poll and used its biased findings to match his ethnic power-based goals; see the previous example in the case of this Quinnipiac University poll. That link also discusses some of the ways Kos is wrong on the general immigration issue.

As with other polls, the NDN version misleads about what exactly "comprehensive immigration reform" means. While there are several related questions, all miraculously showing support for CIR, this is the one that Kos highlights:

The federal government would grant illegal immigrants with conditional legal status permanent residency and a path to citizenship if they maintain a strong employment record, undergo a background check, learn basic English, pay any back taxes and $2,000 in fines and fees.

Those supporting that range from 72% of all voters in Nevada to 84% of all Hispanic voters in Florida. However, if the NDN had disclosed to the respondents all the fine print (and more) the results would probably be far different.

For instance, that legal status would only be "conditional" in a small number of cases; almost everyone who gets into the program would be allowed to stay if they wanted. FBI-level background checks for 10 million people would take between five and ten years at the current rate; there might be millions of new illegal aliens by the time we've finished doing checks on all the ones who applied for "reform", and the push to give those new illegal aliens their own amnesty would be on.

The recent CIR bill also only required those admitted into the program to show that they've signed up for English classes, it didn't require them to learn English. And, groups like NDN would fight to weaken English requirements in future bills. That CIR bill also briefly included a provision allowing illegal aliens to forego two out of five years of back taxes.

And, any form of amnesty would lead to more illegal immigration and more power inside the U.S. for the Mexican government.

The NDN poll, like almost all of the rest, isn't really seeking attitudes about immigration. The polls are designed to mislead those being told about them, to comfort those who support illegal and/or massive immigration, and also to guage how groups like NDN and hacks like Kos can successfully lie about this issue.