"Give me (less of) your tired, your poor", says H-Town

The newest results of the annual Houston Area Survey are starting to appear, showing Houstonians' increasing wariness of lingering Katrina victims and the influence of immigration in the city, among other concerns. The survey, an annual pet project of Rice University Professor Stephen Klineberg, has been tracking city-wide trends of opinions and demographics since 1982.

This year, February's results show that sixty-six percent of respondents deem the influx of Katrina refugees "a bad thing", an increase over last year's forty-seven percent. As an AP story pointed out yesterday afternoon, this increasing impatience should raise some eyebrows after Mayor White's recent Profile in Courage Award for the City's response and aid following the Katrina tragedy. Both a press release from Rice and the Chronicle's coverage of the survey also emphasize other concerns of demographics, including an increasing fear of overabundant immigration threatening American culture. Most of these concerns, however, seem focused less on the immigrants' actual presence than their possible failure to assimilate properly once here:

This suggests that area residents feel less threatened by immigrants who try to assimilate, Klineberg said. Images of protesters carrying Mexican flags at local immigration marches last year may have stoked fears of ethnic newcomers trying to supplant American culture with their own, he said. "There is this fear that they're not going to assimilate, that they're going to turn America into a satellite of Mexico," Klineberg said.

The survey also shows that the primary concern of the city continues to be crime, while concluding that “The current findings seem to reflect not a personal fear but the perception, gleaned from the media, that crime is once again a serious problem for the region.”

After the full report is released, which Rice says should happen shortly, expect to hear more buzz from the news and blogs as they continue to digest the survey's bounty of statistics.

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Photo: flickr user j-a-x.