According to a recent poll by the Pew Hispanic Center, many Latinos feel that all the discussion and debate surrounding immigration, and the stigma attached to Latinos as a result, are having a negative impact on their lives:

About two-thirds of Hispanics said their lives had been made more difficult by the political fight over immigration and the failure of Congress to address the situation of illegal immigrants, the Pew survey found. Roughly half the Hispanics in the poll said the heightened attention to immigration had had a directly negative impact on them, in some cases making it harder for them to find jobs or housing.

Roughly half of those surveyed also feared that someone close to them would face deportation. The survey also found that reported cases of discrimination against Latinos has gone up in recent years:

Some 41 percent of Hispanics said they or someone close to them had had a personal experience of discrimination in the past five years, an increase of 10 percent since 2002 of Hispanics’ reporting such experiences, the survey found.

Like finding a bottle of Xanax in your smelly old aunt’s medicine cabinet during a family visit, however, there’s always a silver lining and a cause for hope:

Yet despite their worries about the political climate, almost three-quarters of Hispanics are happy with their lives, the survey found, and they are overwhelmingly optimistic that their children will be more successful than they have been.

It’s true, little Madison and Sierra Gonzalez will lead full, happy lives in the United States.

Lives Are Growing Harder, Hispanics Say in Survey [New York Times]