Thread: Poll: Crack Down on Illegal Immigration

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Poll: Crack down on illegal immigration
Sunday, June 11, 2006
By SALLIE OWEN
Capital Bureau
Alabamians want something done about illegal immigration, and they find President Bush's efforts unsatisfactory, results of a new Press-Register/University of South Alabama poll suggest.

Poll respondents overwhelmingly favored sending National Guard troops to the Mexican border and requiring national identification cards.

"That really does show people are ready to do something about the issue," said Keith Nicholls, a political science professor and director of the USA Polling Group.

Sixty-four percent of poll respondents rated Bush's job performance on illegal immigration as "only fair" or "poor." That contrasted with a national survey last month which found that about half of Americans disapproved of the president's work on the issue.

The Press-Register/USA poll surveyed 401 Alabama adults randomly by telephone last Monday through Thursday. The margin of error is 5 percentage points.

U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Mobile, is typically one of Bush's biggest boosters, but he agreed with the views reflected in the new polling. "He's getting better, but he's got a long way to go," said Sessions, who has cautioned that some proposals addressing immigration would double or even triple the number of people coming into the country.

"The American people have been right on this issue for 30 years," Sessions told the Press-Register last week. "They have said they will support immigration, but they want a lawful system of immigration that furthers our national interest."

Bush initially opposed fencing sections of Mexican border. But 55 percent of Alabamians favor fencing the border, the new poll indicates.

The U.S. House and Senate have passed different immigration measures with separate fence provisions. The House supports 700 miles of mandatory fencing along the 1,951-mile-long border; the Senate prefers 370 miles of fence combined with 500 miles of vehicle barriers. The two chambers have yet to resolve differences in the two proposals.

Some National Guard units are already at work in some areas of the border, which spans California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Units from hurricane-prone states are not expected to help border patrol officers, said Lt. Col. Bob Horton of the Alabama National Guard.
Alabama has a greater share of low-skill workers than the nation as a whole, which means that more people here may feel threatened by competition in the job market, Nicholls said.

Research shows that an influx of low-skill immigrant workers reduces the wages paid to low-skill American workers, Sessions said.

Fifty-six percent of poll respondents said they would support an effort to identify and deport all illegal immigrants back to their home countries, while 31 percent would be opposed.

Vince Gawronski, a political science professor at Birmingham-Southern College, said that the poll results could have varied somewhat if people were asked about "undocumented migrants" instead of "illegal immigrants."

While Americans look down on law-breakers, they feel differently about a migrant who is hard-working and family-oriented, said Gawronski, who studies Latin America and immigration.

Most respondents to the Press-Register/USA poll said that hiring illegal immigrants should not be considered a serious crime. Only two out of five said it should be a felony.

"If businesses didn't hire these people, there would not be illegal immigrants," Nicholls said. But "that's not the way people look at this."

Gawronski said it would be interesting to know how many of the poll respondents had ever hired an immigrant, whether as a full-time worker or for tasks such as yardwork, cleaning or pool maintenance.

Existing law requires employers to ask for documentation but does not force them to verify it. Sessions and Bush favor new high-tech identification cards that would carry a fraud-resistant digital fingerprint.

Businesses caught knowingly hiring illegal immigrants are subject to fines that start at $250 per worker but can go as high as $10,000 each. Fines rarely reach maximum levels, and enforcement is poor. In the entire United States, only three employers were fined for hiring illegal workers in 2004, according to the most recent information available.

The Senate version of the immigration bill would generally double those fines

Vince Gawronski, a political science professor at Birmingham-Southern College, said that the poll results could have varied somewhat if people were asked about "undocumented migrants" instead of "illegal immigrants."

Yes, lets skew the poll results by asking misleading questions, so we can get the results we enlightened college professors want.

The LAW says they are ILLEGAL aliens.