Pollster John Zogby's reports are completely useless. He's a political hack who has admitted to massaging poll results according to how he "feels" about the responses. Here's his latest fluff:
>Report criticizes Hazleton immigrant crackdown
By MICHAEL RUBINKAM
The Associated Press
HAZLETON, Pa. - The city's highly publicized campaign of targeting illegal immigrants threatens to drive away business and industry and damage prospects for economic revitalization, a new report asserts.
The report, by polling firm Zogby International, challenges the mayor's claim that illegal immigrants are responsible for overburdened police, schools and hospitals. It concludes that Hazleton should embrace immigration as a "solution to an aging and declining population."
Zogby was hired by a civic group, the Greater Hazleton Area Civic Partnership, to identify economic and demographic trends and how they will affect future development in the city.
The partnership, which is affiliated with the local chamber of commerce, has not taken a position on the illegal immigrant crackdown and immediately distanced itself from Zogby's comments. Zogby was paid $50,000 for the report.
"We didn't ask for political advice," said former Penn State-Hazleton chancellor John Madden, a partnership official who appeared with Zogby's founder, pollster John Zogby, at a news conference Wednesday.
Republican Mayor Lou Barletta has repeatedly declared that illegal immigrants are wrecking the city of more than 30,000. Last year, he pushed through a law that targeted landlords who rented to illegal immigrants and businesses that employed them.
The law, emulated by dozens of towns around the nation, was recently struck down by a federal judge as unconstitutional following a legal challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union and Hispanic groups. The city has appealed the ruling.
In a commentary accompanying the report, John Zogby urged the partnership to "challenge the mayor on every front."
But Barletta, who attended the news conference, said the report is filled with inaccuracies regarding crime, schools and the city's health system and that he was disappointed that Zogby inserted "his own personal political opinion on immigration" into it.< |
