Thread: Most Back Tighter Border and a Guest-Worker Plan

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... nes-nation
By Ronald Brownstein, Times Staff Writer
April 13, 2006

WASHINGTON — Most Americans say the United States should confront the challenge of illegal immigration by both toughening border enforcement and creating a new guest-worker program rather than stiffening enforcement alone, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found.

By a solid 2-1 margin, those surveyed said they would prefer such a comprehensive approach, which a bipartisan group of senators has proposed, to an enforcement-only strategy, which the House of Representatives approved in December. Support for a comprehensive approach was about the same among Democrats, independents and Republicans, the poll found.

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"Do you remember 100 years ago when we were saying, 'Give us your tired, give us your poor?' " said David Wells, a Republican who works as a golf course groundskeeper in Plant City, Fla. "How come that doesn't still stand? I don't think it is right to send all the people back who have been here 15 or 20 years, who have families here, who have been good, who haven't been in jail and have been productive."

Still, Americans showed markedly less enthusiasm for allowing guest workers to flow into the United States in the future than they did for proposals to permit the estimated 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants already here to remain legally. And even some of those who rejected efforts to remove the illegal immigrants already in the U.S. made clear in interviews that their opposition was based more on practical than philosophical objections.

"I don't think you should be in the country illegally, and I think the people who are here are taking away opportunities from Americans," said Bill Erner, a Democratic factory worker from Dubuque, Iowa. "But the ones that are already here, it would be almost impossible to find them all and send them back to Mexico or wherever they came from."

The nationwide Times/Bloomberg poll contacted 1,357 adults, including 1,234 registered voters, from Saturday through Tuesday. The survey, supervised by Times Polling Director Susan Pinkus, has a margin of sampling error for both groups of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The poll contained ominous findings for the Republican House and Senate majorities as the midterm elections approached.

Although President Bush's job approval rating was essentially unchanged from his 38% showing last month, the new poll found Democrats opening double-digit leads on the key measures of voters' early preferences for the November balloting.

Democrats lead Republicans 49% to 35% among registered voters who were asked which party they intended to support in their congressional districts this fall. When registered voters were asked which party they hoped would control the House and Senate after the midterm election, 51% picked the Democrats and 38% the GOP.

On both questions, independent voters preferred Democrats by ratios of about 3 to 1 or more.

The Republicans "don't have it anymore," said Alfred Smith, an independent in Bucks County, Pa., who runs a printing company. "They don't trust each other. They don't look like they are all together anymore."

Forecasting the effects of these broad national attitudes on the results in individual congressional contests is an imperfect science. Republicans could be helped this fall because relatively few House districts are closely balanced between the parties, and many of the key Senate races are in states that already lean toward the GOP.

Even so, the Democratic advantage found in the poll is nearly three times the advantage Republicans had in 1994 when they made landslide gains in congressional elections.

In these early soundings for 2006, Republicans face the potential reemergence of a gender gap that Bush narrowed in his 2004 reelection. Although men split evenly when asked which party they intended to support in November, women preferred Democrats 57% to 31%, the survey found.

Democrats hold a commanding advantage not only among single women, a traditional Democratic constituency, but among married women, a swing group that broke toward Bush and the GOP in 2004.

The impasse in Washington over restructuring immigration laws has led many to predict the issue could become a flashpoint in this year's election. But the public does not yet seem impassioned about the controversy: Although 84% of poll respondents agreed that illegal immigration was a problem, 31% identified it as one of the country's major problems.

The idea that drew the most support in the survey was allowing illegal immigrants who had been living and working in the U.S. to obtain visas to work here legally, and to move toward citizenship if they met a list of requirements.

Two-thirds of those polled said they supported such a proposal.

Still, about one-fifth of those responding agreed with Katherine Asaif, a Colorado Springs, Colo., schoolteacher, who rejected such ideas. "I understand why people want to come to the United States," she said. "But it does seem to be rewarding the law-breaking."

Establishing a program to import future guest workers drew more modest support, with 54% of those polled supporting and 21% opposing it. Vivian Richardson, a nurse's assistant who lives outside Raleigh, N.C., believes guest workers are necessary because they perform jobs "Americans don't want to do anymore," such as working in fields or poultry plants.

Two centerpieces of the House immigration legislation fared less well, though they attracted more support than opposition: 42% of those surveyed said they supported measures to build a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border and brand illegal immigrants as felons, whereas 35% opposed such measures.

After hearing all the alternatives, 63% said Congress should blend enforcement with a guest-worker program, as Bush and many senators in both parties want, whereas 30% said Congress should focus on enforcement only, as many House Republican leaders prefer.

Among whites, an underlying class division ran through several of the questions. The GOP enforcement provisions drew much more support from whites without a college degree than those with advanced education.

Conversely, a guest-worker program was notably more popular among college-educated whites than among those without college degrees, who could face more direct economic competition from the importation of such workers.

"They say [illegal immigrants] want to do a job Americans don't want to do," said Erner, the Democratic factory worker. "I think [employers] don't want to pay a wage Americans can live on."

Those class fissures help explain a surprising result: that Democrats are less enthusiastic than Republicans about proposals to create a guest-worker program or to legalize illegal immigrants — ideas supported much more in Washington by Democratic than Republican leaders.

Support for the legalization of illegal immigrants is notably higher among independents (71%) and Republicans (67%) than Democrats (59%). The guest-worker program also drew more support among independents (60%) and Republicans (56%) than Democrats (48%).

Part of the reason for the disparity is that non-college voters, who are most skeptical of the idea, constitute a larger share of Democrats than Republicans. The larger reason is that Democratic voters without a college education are much more skeptical about those ideas than Republicans of similar education levels.

For instance, although 54% of Republicans without a college degree support a program to import guest workers, just 38% of such Democrats do. Support for a guest-worker program is especially low among minority Democrats without college degrees — some of the people who might face the greatest competition for jobs from such a program

Man, they are really using up this lie with a poll technique. Very powerful stuff! Make the majority that opposes Guest Worker Amnesty feel like they are the minority and should not speak up because of some cooked poll numbers!

Dont believe the lies!

W

Anyone who trust LATimes needs to have their head examined.