Non-Attitudes and Immigration

Non-attitudes are when people being asked polling questions answer the questions despite the fact that they have no opinion, or even worse know nothing of what the pollster is talking about. It is said that people do this for many reasons. One could be to make themselves look better in front of the pollster, they are uninformed and to embarrassed to admit it, or even answer the questions just because they feel it is rude to not answer them. We learned in class that non-attitudes are most likely to come from 4 types of issues or policies. The first is international issues. These are issues that happen over seas and have little or nothing to do with America. Another is low-salience issues. These are issues that are not very prominent and do not receive much media coverage. State and local issues are also likely to have many non-attitudes. And finally issues that have many details within a policy are likely to not have many followers. This is referred to as policy minutia. My topic of immigration would not seem to have the problem of non-attitudes. It is an international issue but it is also very much a domestic one. It is something that most every has an opinion on. Although it does not get much coverage with everything else currently going on it has been highly publicized in the past. Shortly following 9/11 many Americans felt strongly about immigration reform and the safety of our country. This enthusiasm has faded but is still a problem today. It has nothing to do with state and local issues. Policy minutia is the only potential for non-attitudes. When asking if we should strengthen border security most everyone could answer confidently yes or no. However when looking at specific details that are not commonly known to the public problems may arise. For examples issues of illegal immigrants already in the country or currently being held in correctional facilities what should happen to them? Or the illegals with children that are citizens of America. Do we let them stay? or deport them all? This and other questions can potentially make this problem a little serious than i have expected.