Thread: Americans worry that illegal migrants threaten way of life, economy

By Alistair Bell
Thu Aug 7, 2014 8:42am EDT

(Reuters) - As President Barack Obama considers sidestepping Congress to loosen U.S. immigration policy, a Reuters/Ipsos poll shows Americans are deeply worried that illegal immigration is threatening the nation's culture and economy.

Seventy percent of Americans - including 86 percent of Republicans - believe undocumented immigrants threaten traditional U.S. beliefs and customs, according to the poll.

The findings suggest immigration could join Obamacare - the healthcare insurance overhaul - and the economy as hot button issues that encourage more Republicans to vote in November's congressional election.

With Congress failing to agree on broad immigration reforms, Obama could act alone in the next few weeks to give work permits to up to 5 million undocumented immigrants and delay some deportations, according to media reports.

Hispanic and liberal voters would welcome that, but the online survey suggests much of the rest of the nation may not.

Despite arguments from the White House and groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that legal immigration benefits business, 63 percent of people in the online survey also said immigrants place a burden on the economy.

While the economy and Obamacare remain the key concerns of voters, immigration has become more of an issue in recent months because of intense media coverage of a surge of illegal migrants, including tens of thousands of children, flooding into the United States from Central America.

Even 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from the U.S.-Mexico border, the immigration debate is catching fire in New Hampshire. Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown last week launched a TV ad attacking Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen for "pro-amnesty policies" on immigration which he says she shares with Obama.

While Brown is trailing the Democrat in polls by around 10 points and still needs to win his own primary, it was the first ad by a major Senate candidate to focus on immigration and the crisis of children on the border.

New Hampshire does not have a large Hispanic immigrant population, but conservatives' concern about the burden on local services from Somali, Sudanese and Bhutanese refugees has simmered for several years.

When Brown talked to voters at a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall in the town of Kingston last week, most audience questions were about immigration.

One woman asked how authorities could ensure any child migrants from Central America sent to New Hampshire were free from disease, although it was not clear at the time if any had actually been resettled in the state.

TOUGH POLL NUMBERS

In Denver, Reuters/Ipsos poll respondent Tom Vanderbur, 72, criticized Congress for going into summer recess after failing to pass border security measures but said he was not convinced that Obama should act unilaterally on immigration.

"I don’t think that he has a right to just make those kinds of decisions on his own," said retiree Vanderbur, a registered Democrat in a state where another U.S. Senate seat is being hotly contested.

Vanderbur was among the 45 percent of people in the poll, carried out between July 15-22, who said the number of immigrants legally allowed to enter the country should be reduced.

Only 17 percent thought more legal immigrants should be allowed to come to the United States. Thirty-eight percent said the number should stay the same.

"If Obama starts using executive orders to grant citizenship or to stop deportations I think he gives Republicans a big opening," said Jennifer Duffy, of the Cook Political Report analyst group. "It'll be about the issue at hand, immigration, but it also feeds into this Republican narrative of overreach, of sort of abusing his power."

Ahead of the elections, Republicans have accused Obama of creating a “legacy of lawlessness” by threatening to bypass a deadlocked Congress, and last month House Republicans voted to file a lawsuit against him on charges that he overstepped his authority in carrying out key parts of Obamacare.

RISKS OF GOING SOLO

Obama acting alone on immigration could make Republicans more likely to go out and vote in November, said Ipsos pollster Chris Jackson.

"It'll certainly contribute to energizing Republicans," Jackson said. Independent voters are also wary of new waves of immigrants but they tend not to turn out heavily at midterm elections.

Beyond New Hampshire, immigration has come up as a contentious issue in the Colorado and Arkansas Senate races and the Arizona governor's election.

A separate Reuters/Ipsos online poll shows that voters see immigration as the third most important problem facing the nation. Respondents in a Gallup poll in July cited immigration as the No.1 problem, ahead of the economy.

A Republican candidate for New Hampshire state senator, Eddie Edwards, said seven out of 10 voters voice worries about immigration and refugees when he canvasses door to door.

"If President Obama issues a jarring set of executive actions on legalization he could be handing the Senate to the GOP, including putting New Hampshire truly in play," said Republican strategist Ford O'Connell.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said this week he would not discuss details of how Obama might use his executive authority on immigration, but any measures Obama takes "may be in a position to mitigate some of the problems of our broken immigration system."

Nationally, immigration has long been seen as a vote winner for Democrats and Obama, who won more than 70 percent of the Latino vote in his 2012 re-election. Republicans' refusal since then to approve immigration reform has further alienated Hispanics, but Latino voters do not traditionally vote in large numbers in congressional elections, blunting the Democrats' advantage with that group in November.

Opposition to illegal immigration is higher in New England than in much of the rest of the country, according to the Reuters/Ipsos poll of mid-July. Seventy-six percent of people in the region said undocumented immigrants threaten American beliefs and customs, compared to 70 percent nationally.

Bill Roy, a retired postal work from Manchester, New Hampshire, has voted for Democrats and Republicans in the past and said immigration is a top issue for him in deciding which candidate to back.

He said there was no need for either Obama or Congress to take new measures. "It doesn't matter. Enforce the laws that we have here now," he said.

--The Reuters/Ipsos poll of mid-July interviewed 2,014 Americans online. The precision of the Reuters/Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the survey had a credibility interval of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...0G70BE20140807

70% Of Americans Believe Illegal Immigrants Threaten Way Of Life

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/07/2014 18:34 -0400

In recent weeks, Bloomberg Businessweek reports, President Obama and congressional Republicans have begun to offer the same simple-sounding solution for dealing with the flood of children crossing the U.S. border alone: Send the kids home. But with tens of thousands of them churning through the system, some just toddlers, the logistics are overwhelming. Since October, more than 57,000 children have arrived by themselves, most from Central America (as we show below), and 22,000 more have been detained with their parents (mostly children under 12). The American people appears considerably more concerned than the politicians - a Reuters/Ipsos poll shows 70% of Americans - including 86% of Republicans - believe undocumented immigrants threaten traditional U.S. beliefs and customs.

As Bloomberg Businessweek notes,

As of June 30, fewer than 500 of the 57,000 have been sent home, and more children continue to arrive every day, despite pleas from the Obama administration to Central Americans not to come.



U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents find that most don’t try to run; in fact, they want to be caught. The kids hope that being apprehended will begin another journey, one that will end with permission to remain in the U.S.

“It’s just been politically untenable to even improve services for these kids we were seeing, let alone prepare for emergency situations,”

* * *
And the American people is starting to worry... as Reuters reports,

As President Barack Obama considers sidestepping Congress to loosen U.S. immigration policy, a Reuters/Ipsos poll shows Americans are deeply worried that illegal immigration is threatening the nation's culture and economy.

Seventy percent of Americans - including 86 percent of Republicans - believe undocumented immigrants threaten traditional U.S. beliefs and customs, according to the poll.

The findings suggest immigration could join Obamacare - the healthcare insurance overhaul - and the economy as hot button issues that encourage more Republicans to vote in November's congressional election.

...

Only 17 percent thought more legal immigrants should be allowed to come to the United States. Thirty-eight percent said the number should stay the same.

...

"If Obama starts using executive orders to grant citizenship or to stop deportations I think he gives Republicans a big opening," said Jennifer Duffy, of the Cook Political Report analyst group. "It'll be about the issue at hand, immigration, but it also feeds into this Republican narrative of overreach, of sort of abusing his power."

As one poll respondent (who has voted Dem and Rep in the last few years) noted... there was no need for either Obama or Congress to take new measures. "It doesn't matter. Enforce the laws that we have here now," he said.


http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-0...eaten-way-life

Originally Posted by Jean

(Reuters) - As President Barack Obama considers sidestepping Congress to loosen U.S. immigration policy, a Reuters/Ipsos poll shows Americans are deeply worried that illegal immigration is threatening the nation's culture and economy.

Nothing like a large pool of surplus labor to prevent Americans from being able to keep up with inflation.
*************************************
Americans first in this magnificent country

American jobs for American workers

Fair trade, not free trade

Human Events

If 71% of Americans believe our country is headed in the wrong direction - what does that mean for our future?



Who owns the future? | Human Events
Our world may be at the "end of history" where "Western liberal democracy" becomes "the final form of human government."
humanevents.com

Who owns the future?



By: Patrick J. Buchanan
8/8/2014 06:00 AM

At the end of the Cold War, Francis Fukuyama famously wrote that our world may be at the “end of history” where “Western liberal democracy” becomes “the final form of human government.”
A quarter century on, such optimism seems naive.
Consider the United States, the paragon of liberal democracy.
An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll finds that only 14 percent of the people approve of Congress and only 19 percent approve of the GOP. Seventy-one percent believe America is headed in the wrong direction.
Nor is this the exceptional crisis of a particular presidency.
JFK was assassinated. LBJ was broken by race riots and anti-war demonstrations. Richard Nixon, facing impeachment, resigned. Gerald Ford was rejected by the electorate. Ronald Reagan was highly successful — like Nixon, he won in a 49-state landslide after his first term — but during the Iran-Contra scandal of 1987 there was a real threat of a second impeachment. And Bill Clinton was impeached.
Our democracy seems to be at war with itself.
Now there is talk of impeaching Obama. It will become a clamor should he grant executive amnesty to 5 million illegal immigrants.
Political science has long described what seems to be happening.
From the tribal leader comes the monarch, whose reign gives way to an aristocracy that produces a middle class that creates a republic, the degenerative form of which is that pure democracy of which John Adams wrote:
“Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.” Then comes the strong man again.
Is that our future? Is Western democracy approaching the end of its tether, with the seeming success of authoritarian capitalism in China and Russia? Recent history provides us with examples.
World War I, begun 100 years ago, brought down many of the reigning monarchs of Europe. The caliph of the Ottoman Empire was sent packing by Kemal Ataturk. Czar Nicholas II was murdered on the orders of the usurper Vladimir Lenin.
Fighting off a Bolshevik invasion, Marshal Pilsudski rose to power in Poland. Admiral Miklos Horthy ran the communists out of Budapest and took the helm. Mussolini led the 1922 March on Rome. Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 failed, but his party utilized democracy’s institutions to seize power and murder democracy. Out of the Spanish Civil War came the dictatorship of Gen. Franco. And so it went.
Vladimir Putin may be the most reviled European leader among Western elites today, but he is more popular in his own country than any other Western ruler, with 80 percent approval, for standing up for Russia and Russians everywhere.
Polls in France say that, were elections held today, Marine Le Pen would replace Francois Hollande in the Elysee Palace.
Eurocrats bewail what is happening, but, inhibited by secularist ideology, fail to understand it. They believe in economism, rule by scholarly global elites, and recoil at the resurgence of nationalism and populism. They do no understand people of the heart because they do not understand human nature.
People don’t enlist, endure, fight and die for cerebral constructs.
Who, then, will own the future — of Europe, America, the world?
The day of the democratist and transnational elite appears to be passing. In Europe, the Scots, Catalans, Corsicans, Venetians and Flemish seek to secede from England, Spain, France, Italy and Belgium, respectively.
Not only the National Front in France, but also the UK Independence Party of Nigel Farage and a dozen other nationalist parties on the continent want out of the European Union and an end to immigration.
And they are no longer intimidated by name-calling.
In America, a tectonic shift has taken place in public opinion with the arrival on our border of 60,000 children from Central America and the threat by Obama to issue executive amnesty to 5 million illegals.
Last week, Alabama Congressman “Mo” Brooks said there is a “war on whites” in America, being led by Obama, noting that under civil right laws the only group one may discriminate against is white males.
Nor has Brooks recanted under fire.
In a Washington Post column answering Brooks, “A Welcome End to American Whiteness,” Dana Milbank concedes that, by 2043, white Americans will be less than half of the U.S. population. They were near 90 percent in 1960.
Far from being something to fear, Milbank writes, this “is to be celebrated. Indeed, it is the key to our survival.” Immigrants pouring in from the Third World will bring a “fresh labor supply” and “fresh blood to cure us of what ails us.” A tired America will be revitalized.
Perhaps. But sociologist Robert Putnam discovered that the more ethnically and linguistically diverse a society becomes, the more its social capital evaporates, and the less do its multicultural members gather together to cooperate in common causes.
And from those recent polls, Americans seem to look on the prospect of an even more racially and culturally diverse America oftomorrow, not with anticipation, but with a measure of dread.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book “The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority.”

http://humanevents.com/2014/08/08/wh...paign=heupdate

Originally Posted by Jean

By Alistair Bell
Thu Aug 7, 2014 8:42am EDT

(Reuters) - As President Barack Obama considers sidestepping Congress to loosen U.S. immigration policy, a Reuters/Ipsos poll shows Americans are deeply worried that illegal immigration is threatening the nation's culture and economy.

Seventy percent of Americans - including 86 percent of Republicans - believe undocumented immigrants threaten traditional U.S. beliefs and customs, according to the poll.


http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...0G70BE20140807

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http://www.alipac.us/content.php?r=3...f-life-economy